THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, July 30, 1995 TAG: 9507280631
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DAVE MAYFIELD, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 115 lines
When Rebecca Holden moved her Virginia Beach interior-architecture business out of Bell Atlantic's territory and into GTE's last November, she assumed there would be little change.
Not so. She now pays $150 more a month in long-distance calls because her local dialing area under GTE is much smaller. And her voice-mail service from GTE has given her fits. Ironically, if she had just moved her office to the other side of International Parkway, she'd could have remained with Bell Atlantic.
``My father said, `Maybe you could stretch an extra-long extension cord across the street,' '' Holden said.
Holden is one of tens of thousands of Hampton Roads customers of the ``other local phone company,'' GTE.
Compared to their far more populous Bell Atlantic neighbors, GTE's customers get much less of a calling range. And there have been significant lapses in the reliability of GTE's system, so much so that the State Corporation Commission conducted a wide-ranging investigation of the company's service problems two years ago.
GTE is taking steps to improve its reputation.
While some customers, like Holden, say they continue to have problems with GTE services, the corporation commission says the phone company's reliability measures are again acceptable.
And last month, GTE filed its long-awaited plan for increasing the no-toll calling range of its customers in southeastern Virginia. About 70,000 of them are scattered across southern Virginia Beach and Chesapeake, pockets of Suffolk and rural communities like Franklin and Smithfield.
Bell Atlantic eliminated most tolls for calls inside Hampton Roads last October, and that helped spur GTE to follow suit.
But Lacy Yeatts, a regional communications manager for GTE, said coming competition in local-exchange phone service motivated the company more to improve.
``We're doing this, really, to be able to compete in a rapidly changing marketplace,'' she said.
The corporation commission is proposing rules that will, as early as the second half of 1996, end long-established monopolies enjoyed by local phone companies in Virginia.
Commission officials say Cox Communications Inc., the largest Hampton Roads cable operator, is planning to use its extensive fiber-optic network to challenge Bell Atlantic and GTE.
And it's possible that Bell Atlantic will branch out of its territory to challenge GTE. The commission is considering forcing communications carriers to let competitors use their networks of utility poles and underground conduits for stringing lines of their own. It may also require carriers to resell excess capacity on their networks to competitors at discounted wholesale rates.
``It's important for GTE not to be reactive in the local dialing arena,'' said Michael Hall, GTE's area customer-operations manager.
GTE's proposal last month to the corporation commission is a mixed bag. If put into effect Jan. 1, 1996, as proposed, it would increase the basic monthly phone rates for most of its southeastern Virginia customers. But it would give them a much greater no-toll dialing area.
Charges for directory assistance would increase from 29 to 50 cents a call, and pay-phone charges would increase from 25 to 35 cents. But GTE wants to lower charges for many long-distance calls it handles, such as from Virginia Beach to Williamsburg. And it proposes a special discounted ``lifeline'' phone service for poor customers.
For the most part, the company said, the changes will put prices for its services more in line with the cost of providing them. GTE insists that its proposal is ``revenue neutral,'' meaning that its total bill collections won't increase.
Residential customers with Touch-Tone service will pay between $1.63 and $9.89 more a month for flat-rate service. The smallest increase will be for the company's customers in Virginia Beach, the largest for communities, like Windsor, on the rural western fringes of Hampton Roads.
Meanwhile, flat-rate monthly charges for Touch-Tone business lines will drop by 86 cents in Virginia Beach, but go up elsewhere: for instance, by $1.16 in Chesapeake, $3.08 to $9.27 in Suffolk, and $21.41 in Windsor.
GTE says the much broader no-toll dialing area will, by eliminating long-distance charges, more than compensate many customers for the basic-rate increases.
For $2.59 to $4.59 more a month, for instance, GTE's residential customers in Chesapeake will be able to start dialing toll-free to Hampton, Newport News, Poquoson, York County, Suffolk, Windsor, Smithfield and Isle of Wight County. Those without Touch-Tone service face the larger increase.
And for an extra $7.16 to $9.16 a month, Smithfield-area residents would get an even bigger expansion in no-toll dialing. Nearly all of South Hampton Roads and most of the Peninsula would be added to their local calling territory, along with Franklin, Wakefield, Windsor and Surry County.
Alan Monette, a Smithfield-area business owner who has led the community's effort to expand local dialing, said people in that Isle of Wight County enclave are ``really pleased with the offer.''
Monette's only concern is that Bell Atlantic wants to continue charging its own customers elsewhere in Hampton Roads extra when they dial into Smithfield or Isle of Wight.
Under a plan submitted to the corporation commission by Bell Atlantic, Norfolk residents, for instance, would pay an extra $15 a month for an unlimited number of calls to the Smithfield area.
``It seems to me that if we're striving for regionalism, this is one of most obvious things in the area that needs to be done away with,'' Monette said.
Out in Virginia Beach, interior architect Holden is looking forward to the proposed GTE changes.
She could use the $150 a month she figures she'll save when tolls for calling her customers on the Peninsula are eliminated.
``I'm one of those who bends down and picks up pennies,'' Holden said. ILLUSTRATION: Graphic
STAFF
GTE-BELL ATLANTIC COMPARISON
[For complete graphic, please see microfilm]
by CNB