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Technology Stocks : WCOM -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Anthony Wong who wrote (3360)	10/2/1998 6:13:00 PM
From: MONACO	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 11568

Where do you see the stock price of this company WCOM in 6 months?? NO wishful thinking, but SERIOUSLY, is it a buy at 46??..M

To: Anthony Wong who wrote (3360)	10/5/1998 7:53:00 PM
From: Anthony Wong	Respond to of 11568

10/05 18:25 FCC plans to reexamine long-distance call fees WASHINGTON, Oct 5 (Reuters) - The Federal Communications Commission said on Monday it would revisit its 1997 order cutting billions of dollars off the cost of long-distance telephone calls after the savings failed to materialize on many consumer bills. The move follows complaints in August by leading consumer groups that long-distance companies had not passed on the lower charges to millions of customers subscribing to basic calling plans. The FCC's 1997 order reduced per-minute access charges paid by long-distance carriers to local phone companies for beginning and ending calls by more than $20 billion over five years. But the complex order also mandated higher per-line fees that the long-distance companies passed along to their customers. The agency said on Monday it would accept comments for about a month on whether and how the order should be revised. "We have encouraged them basically to start all over again," said Mark Cooper, director of research for the Consumer Federation of America. After the initial reduction of $1.7 billion in access fees last year, the long-distance companies cut rates but prices held steady this year despite a further drop of nearly $1 billion in access charges, the consumer groups said. The money might have been used by the companies to offer special deals to businesses and heavy residential users, they said. Long-distance carriers have maintained they passed along all savings in access charges to consumers but that the savings were offset by the increase in per-line fees. Cooper said the FCC should now cut $1 off a monthly line item charge billed directly to consumers, known as subscriber line charge. FCC Chairman William Kennard said Monday the agency had hoped competition among local phone carriers would have brought down access charges more quickly. But competition has not materialized, necessitating some tinkering with the order, he said. "The growth in access providers has been sporadic and uneven," he said. "Balancing our long-term goals against the reality of today's marketplace requires of us a degree of agility and responsiveness that perhaps was not so vital in the days of regulated monopolies." Long-distance companies called on the FCC to make deeper cuts in per-minute charges. "We have done studies showing access charges are $10 billion above their true cost," said Claire Hassett, spokeswoman for MCI WorldCom Inc. "We think we can go back to the drawing board and...make it happen a little bit faster." Local carriers have argued the FCC cut access charges too much and have asked for greater flexibility in making reductions. "We think they may be a bit premature to revisit this," said Robert Blau, executive vice president at BellSouth Corp. Blau said the FCC ought to first revamp the system of implicit and explicit subsidies used to keep the cost of basic residential service affordable. "The big issue here is that they have to recognize that a large share of these interstate access rates represent implicit subsidies that are used to underwrite the cost of local service," he said.