🚀 go-pugleaf

serge@netcom.com (Innocent Bystander) writes:

>chi@netcom.com (Curt Hagenlocher) writes:

>>My girlfriend used to go to UCI and I live on the Westside.  It cost me
>>more to call her than it did to call my parents in Sonoma County.  Why?
>>With no competition on the call to Irvine (category "Zone 5"), PacBell
>>had no impetus to lower the rates.

>>It has been longstanding practice for the phone companies to subsidize
>>local calls at the expense of long-distance, and residential calls at
>>the cost of business.  As the local telephone companies lost control of
>>the longer-distance cals, the basic residential rate went up.

>The competition was always there.  There was and is plenty of no-surcharge
>calling cards with 800 access and plain old 950-xxxx, and even a card with
>a 50c surcharge would have saved you on a call longer than 5 minutes or so.
>The fact that most people don't bother to look further than their phone book
>and have no imagination works well for Pacific Bell.

>The "new lower rates" are a myth for a residential customer because they
>will be noticeably lower only during business hours, and practically the
>same (and still higher than long-distance rates for the same mileage) at
>evening/night time.

>Returning to people who don't know or don't care how to dial 10xxx, under the
>new rate structure, Pacific Bell still gets away with charging more than LD
>companies (and remember, they pay Pacific Bell to complete the LD calls
>locally, and Pacific Bell does not have that overhead, which constitutes
>a major part of the LD rates when they get below 10c/min).  Of course, if
>you own Pacific Telesys stock, it's probably good for you and you'll get
>a few extra bucks next year, but I don't see how paying an extra $30/year
>for nothing can benefit me.

>>--
>>Curt Hagenlocher
>>chi@netcom.com

You are absolutely right! Furthermore, there is practically NO DIFFERENCE
between this decision and the one last year (when the PUC was embarassed
by the report that a PAC BELL employee had written substaitial parts of 
the decision and withdrew the decision). OCMS service is again terminated.
The PUC seems to make decisions in the sole interest of the phone companies,
not the public. And the PUC's Division of Ratepayer Advocates, which is supposed
to stick up for consumers, is worse than the rest ofthe PUC.
- Shneor Sherman
.