INTERNET SERVICE ADDS SANTA CLARITA ACCESS.

Byline: Daily News Staff and Wire Services

Pacific Bell has introduced two significant upgrades to its consumer Internet dial-up service: personal home pages and a new series of local access numbers including a toll-free line for Santa Clarita.

With personal home pages, Pacific Bell Internet Services customers can have a presence on the Internet by creating their own home page. The company offers customers a choice of creating and uploading their home page using an easy-to-use Web interface complete with pre-existing templates, or by using any third-party authoring tool and uploading via file transfer protocol.

The personal home page service is available to the company's dial-up customers only and can be ordered through the Pacific Bell Web site at www.pacbell.net. The service is $2.95 a month and includes three megabytes of storage. Customers can purchase additional storage space at $1 per megabyte.

The company also announced 11 new local access Internet numbers in Santa Clarita, Antioch, Modesto, Tracy, Stockton, Napa, Vallejo, Fairfield, Oceanside, Yorba Linda and Capistrano Valley. Customers within a local phone call to any of these cities now will no longer receive extra toll charges on their telephone bill when connecting to Pacific Bell Internet.

As part of its service, Pacific Bell offers a ``POP Calculator'' feature that users can call before signing up to see whether their service will be available through a local or toll call. When included with the company's existing 37 access points, the new local numbers enable Pacific Bell to provide local Internet access to more than 85 percent of Californians. The complete list of Pacific Bell's Internet dial-up numbers can be found on the Web site.

Pacific Bell customers gain the convenience of having one itemized communications bill for their Internet, local and long-distance telephone charges.

Dial-up Internet access is available at a monthly flat rate of $19.95 with a 10-day free trial period. Customers can also sign up for a 12-month value pricing plan, which includes two free months of Internet access per year.

Pacific Bell Internet Services is a full-service Internet access provider serving business and residential customers in California.

For information, visit the company's web site at http://www.pacbell.net, send an e-mail message to internet-infopacbell.net or call toll-free [phone].