FCC Approves Plan to Help AT&T; Rivals

In a major victory for AT&T;’s competitors in the nation’s $45-billion long-distance telephone market, the Federal Communications Commission has given tentative approval to a new “equal-access” procedure that will make it easier for them to take customers away from AT&T;, which dominates the lucrative field.

The FCC is scheduled to take final action May 31.

If the order becomes final, Pacific Bell, Nevada Bell and the other former AT&T; local telephone companies will be obliged to devise a new plan to allocate customers who fail to designate a preferred long-distance carrier among available services, instead of leaving them with AT&T.;

Under the so-called equal-access provision of the divestiture agreement that broke up the Bell System, AT&T;’s former local companies are converting their switches, which were designed to accommodate only AT&T;, to provide all carriers the same quality of connections and ease of access to their customers.

Spreading Through Southland

Such equal-access conversion is now spreading through the Southland. Without it, only AT&T; customers can obtain long-distance service by merely dialing 1, an area code and a seven-digit local number, using either a dial or push-button phone. Customers of other services must use a push-button phone and must first enter a local number to reach their carrier’s switch, then additional numbers identifying their account, and then the area code and local number.

Most local companies, including Pacific Bell and independent General Telephone of California, have asked their customers to designate a “preferred” or “dial 1” long-distance carrier in the 90 days before equal-access service begins in their area. Those who fail to respond, however, have been left by default with AT&T--a; practice the competitors’ consider unfair.

The draft order would leave local companies free to devise their own systems of allocating the so-called default customers. One model for that is now in use by Northwestern Bell in Minneapolis and Omaha and is the basis for the FCC’s plan. Any customers who don’t indicate a choice of long-distance carrier on their ballots are distributed to companies in the same ratio as those who did make a choice.

The Washington Post reported Friday the contents of the order.