BELL OFFERS 'LOCAL PLUS' IN REGION

Karen Diebold of Benton called a Cape Girardeau number Thursday morning.

"It didn't cost me extra," said Diebold, who normally had to pay to call outside her immediate area.

"I had to pay to call my doctor, my dentist and some friends," said Diebold, who headed a petition drive more than a year ago aimed at expansion of the local telephone calling service area.

When Southwestern Bell's "Local Plus" went into effect this week, Diebold was one of its first customers in Southeast Missouri.

"Then I started calling my friends to let them know about it," said Diebold. "It's great. I can call St. Louis, Sikeston, and Cape Girardeau. "I'm tickled with the new service."

The new service, which is an optional outbound local-calling package, provides for a flat monthly fee unlimited calls for customers in the 314 and 636 area codes, the majority of 573 area code and a portion of the 618 code in Southern Illinois.

"The only exceptions in the 573 area code are calls to Columbia, Jefferson City and Westphalia," said Donna Burk of Cape Girardeau, Southeast Missouri regional director for external affairs for Southwestern Bell.

"The regional calling area includes a number of Metro East (Illinois 618 area code) communities, including Alton, Collinsville, Edwardsville, East St. Louis, Belleville and McClure." said Burk.

Local Plus allows our Missouri customers to talk as long as they want whenever they want to anyone within the call area for the one set residential price of $30, said Burk. The commercial cost is $60 a month.

Southwestern Bell has been working on the Local Plus program for more than six months. The company proposed the service last summer, but the Public Service Commission rejected the first proposal because Bell had called it a local service.

Once PSC approval was given in November, the company started putting together the technology to make it work, said Brian Westrich of Southwestern Bell's St. Louis office. "We were ready to offer the service in all four Missouri regional areas this week," he said.

With Local Plus, callers don't have to dial 1 to reach numbers in the regional areas, said Burk. Calls within the same area code can be dialed with seven digits. Calls between area codes are dialed with 10 digits: the area code plus the local seven-digit number.

The proposal is in response to the many customers who have indicated they want larger calling areas, said Burk.

Diebold became interested in the proposed program last year, saying it was unfair that people who live in small towns like Benton, Chaffee and Oran must pay long-distance rates to phone Cape Girardeau or Jackson, where many of the residents shop or work.

Diebold started the petition for a local calling service and netted more than 1,300 signers from the immediate area.

Diebold had moved to Benton from Atlanta in 1977 and found soaring phone bills because of charges for nearby long-distance calls.

"It cost us $1.10 to call the local school here," she said.