TRAC and Four Other Consumer Groups Are Concerned About the Effects of Discontinuance on Rural, Lower Income and Minority Consumers.

On August 24, 2001 TRAC, the Telecommunications Research and Action Center, filed a comment with the Federal Communications Commission (the FCC) urging the FCC to deny AT&T's proposed transition plan to discontinue a service that allows some payphones to accept coins for long distance calls. TRAC requested that at minimum, the FCC should demand that AT&T resubmit a modified transition plan that incorporates the input of the Commission and commenters. The National Association of Community Action Agencies, Citizen Utility Board-Illinois, California Office of Ratepayer Advocates and the National Indian Education Association joined TRAC in this filing.

Following a FCC request that AT&T submit a transition plan addressing concerns raised by TRAC and others, AT&T issued their transition plan to discontinue Sent-Paid coin service on August 10, 2001. Dirck A. Hargraves, Counsel to TRAC termed the plan as, "argumentative, non-responsive and providing little in the way of consumer education and outreach."

TRAC maintains its concern that many customers will not be able to make some long distance calls from payphones without AT&T's Sent-Paid Coin Service. Millions of lower income customers do not have any home phone service and are not likely to have access to credit or other calling cards. TRAC pointed out that unless the FCC extends the time period for AT&T to educate consumers, and for other payphone service providers to implement substitute service, the threat of substantial hardship on certain consumers remains high. "The AT&T transition plan does very little to educate consumers, appears to provide insufficient time to implement, and raises questions of fact that are outside the scope of what the Commission requested," Hargraves said.

# # #

MEDIA CONTACT:

John Breyault, TRAC, johnb@trac.org, 202-263-2943

ABOUT TRAC:

The Telecommunications Research and Action Center (TRAC), founded in 1983, is a non-profit membership organization based in Washington, DC that promotes the interests of residential telecommunications customers. TRAC staff researches telecommunications issues and publishes rate comparisons to help consumers make informed decisions regarding their long distance and local phone service options. TRAC can be found on the web at http://www.trac.org.