There is no inflation -s-
>>411 calls jump to 95
February 17, 2000
BY ROBERT MANOR BUSINESS REPORTER
Ameritech has quietly raised the price of directory-assistance calls by nearly 27 percent, the second time the company has sharply increased phone prices in recent months.
Critics say Texas-based SBC Communications, which bought Ameritech last fall, plans to raise the price of every service not regulated by the state.
People opening their Ameritech bill this month will find that a 411 call for an Illinois telephone number now costs 95 cents, up from 75 cents. A year ago it was just 55 cents. Out-of-state directory assistance remains unchanged at 95 cents.
Citizens Utility Board spokeswoman Pat Clark said SBC is following the same strategy here as it did in California after it bought Pacific Bell in 1997--raise rates. In California, SBC recently doubled the price of a directory-assistance call to 50 cents.
"This is certainly what people saw in other states," Clark said. "We are going to be seeing this more and more."
Ameritech said the price increase is not excessive.
"We are priced below our competitors at 95 cents," Ameritech spokesman Rich Maganini said. "Our competitors are priced at 99 cents to $1.40."
For example, callers who dial 00 reach AT&T's directory assistance. The long-distance company charges $1.40 for telephone numbers in Illinois. Telephone numbers can be looked up for free on the Internet, but many of those Web sites are not as current as directory assistance.
Maganini said directory-assistance calls are expensive because they are labor intensive. He also said Ameritech's 411 service provides numbers from around the nation, not just the area served by Ameritech, and so is worth more to consumers.
And Ameritech's directory assistance offers to connect callers to their number at no extra cost, although usual calling charges apply.
At one of the Chicago-area locations where directory-assistance calls are received, operators manning 80 computers handle about 1,100 calls per day during the peak hours of 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., a manager said. That's about 88,000 peak-period calls per day at that location.
This is Ameritech's second big increase in prices this winter.
Ameritech raised the price of local-toll calls by 25 percent in December. Calls to in-state locations 15 or more miles away now cost a dime a minute, up from eight cents and triple what they cost four years ago.
Prices for directory-assistance and local-toll calls were regulated by the Illinois Commerce Commission, and the low rates were subsidized by other regulated telephone services. Directory assistance and some other services were deregulated in the 1990s, when competitive services were offered, and prices have risen to reflect the cost of providing the service.
Ameritech said little about the recent increases in prices, which were not publicized until phone consumers began complaining about them.
Ameritech said in both cases that it ran legal advertisements to notify the public of the cost increases. The company also said that it explained the increases on its monthly phone bills.
Few people read legal ads or scrutinize their phone bills, however.<<
|
