DATE: Monday, November 17, 1997             TAG: 9711150008

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B10  EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Editorial 

                                            LENGTH:   40 lines

PAY PHONES MAKING A CHANGE PUBLIC TELEPHONE RATES ARE GOING UP, UP AND AWAY.

Remember that sight gag in one of the Superman movies, where mild-mannered Clark Kent dashes to a public telephone, only to find the old fashioned phone booth gone, replaced by one of those totally exposed, waist-high cubicles?

Poor Superman, no place to change.

That same sense of being caught with your pants down - or with no change in the pockets, anyway - will soon afflict many on the East Coast when they attempt to use a pay phone. Fees for local calls rose this week from 25 cents to 35 in Bell Atlantic phone booths from Vermont to Virginia.

With that change, the phone company has scrapped the long-honored single-coin policy that allowed many parents to tape a lone quarter into their child's wallet, secure in the knowledge that at the drop of the coin the kid could easily call home in an emergency.

Increased phone booth rates are not the end of the world. Just the end of a convenient way to reach out and touch the world.

Digging around for quarters, nickels or dimes on inclement days in one of those unprotected kiosks that pass for a phone booth makes the prospect of using a public pay phone less attractive than ever.

Ironically, the price hike is the result of public phone deregulation that Congress passed last year as part of the nation's telecommunication's law. The legislation was intended to increase competition between providers, which should have resulted in lower prices.

Exactly the opposite is happening. What's worse, phone booth customers are a captive lot. For instance, someone calling for a cab can't drive all over town looking for a cheap phone.

News of the price increase was music to the ears of cell phone company execs who figure Bell Atlantic has given customers one more reason to carry a mobile phone wherever they go.

Superman would be doubly dismayed.

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