RURAL PHONE USERS SEEK OPTIONAL SERVICE

The Missouri Public Service Commission's reasoning that elimination of community optional telephone service will help stimulate competition in local telephone and intrastate long-distance services holds little weight with people who must make and pay for frequent long-distance calls to places just a few miles from their homes.

But the PSC, which regulates privately owned utilities in Missouri, decided last week it will end what is commonly called COS on March 31, because telephone companies offer it below their costs, and that adversely affects competition.

COS allows rural customers to pay $16 a month to make and get unlimited calls from designated cities. It has been popular where it is offered because customers can make calls to frequently dialed numbers in nearby urban areas that would normally be subject to long-distance fees.

The PSC decision comes at an inopportune time for phone users at Benton and in other parts of Scott County. They are paying enormous long-distance phone bills for calls to places in northern Scott County and to Cape Girardeau, where most of them do business. Those customers of Southwestern Bell have initiated a petition drive and intend to ask that the telephone company make the area a part of the Cape Girardeau calling area.

The same situation exists for telephone users served by the Patton-Sedgewickville exchange, as explained in a recent letter to the editor on this page. They are unable to call numbers in any other exchange without paying a toll or one of the special-service charges Southwestern Bell makes available. The letter writer pointed out a person there can't even contact his own county government offices or other agencies in Marble Hill, nor anyone in Jackson, Cape Girardeau or Perryville without a toll call.

These are just two examples of rural phone customers having to pay long-distance rates for calls that, if they lived in any number of urban areas around the state, would be toll-free.

Some Missouri legislators, aware of what the PSC ruling will mean to many rural phone users, announced Thursday they will push for the PSC to reverse its decision, which was reached over objections of the commission's public counsel. The state's Office of Public Counsel is responsible for protecting consumer interests in matters before the PSC.

The contention that COS is detrimental to competition is hard to swallow when you're paying over $200 a month in long-distance service for nearby calls, as one Benton family is doing. They and lawmakers might ask the PSC how harmful to competition COS can really be when the Bell system enjoys little competition to begin with.