RULES WOULD DISCONNECT 10-CENT CALL.Byline: Richard Lorant Associated Press Associated Press: see news agency. Associated Press (AP) Cooperative news agency, the oldest and largest in the U.S. and long the largest in the world. ``Dropping a dime'' is about to become a mere figure of speech. Federal regulators are drawing up rules that are sure to end 10-cent pay phone calls in Massachusetts and three other holdout hold·out n. One that withholds agreement or consent upon which progress is contingent. Noun 1. holdout - a negotiator who hopes to gain concessions by refusing to come to terms; "their star pitcher was a holdout for six states where a dime still gets you connected, just as it as has since the Eisenhower administration. ``As it stands right now, there's no question: the 10-cent call is going the way of the 15-cent loaf of bread,'' Jack Hoey, a spokesman for Nynex Corp., said Wednesday. Pay phones began charging 10 cents for local calls in 1954, when five-and-dimes were still accurately named and a brand-new Chevrolet cost $1,700. Over the years, regulators in Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire New Hampshire, one of the New England states of the NE United States. It is bordered by Massachusetts (S), Vermont, with the Connecticut R. forming the boundary (W), the Canadian province of Quebec (NW), and Maine and a short strip of the Atlantic Ocean (E). and Arkansas kept the price of a local call down to a dime by ordering phone companies to subsidize pay phone service with other profits. But a Federal Communications Commission Federal Communications Commission (FCC), independent executive agency of the U.S. government established in 1934 to regulate interstate and foreign communications in the public interest. order that is set to become final on Nov. 8 essentially will deregulate deregulate To reduce or eliminate control. One of the major forces in the financial markets in the 1970s and 1980s was the federal government's decision to deregulate interest rates. the pay phone industry nationwide by the end of next year and end such subsidies. Instead, the free market will set the price. The FCC (1) (Federal Communications Commission, Washington, DC, www.fcc.gov) The U.S. government agency that regulates interstate and international communications including wire, cable, radio, TV and satellite. The FCC was created under the U.S. rules, prompted by the Telecommunications Act of 1996, don't actually require pay phone operators to charge more than a dime. But the last time Nynex did a cost study, in 1993, it figured it was spending 19 to 21 cents a call to provide service at its 50,000 pay phones in Massachusetts. It doesn't take an economics professor to figure out what that means. ``The world is a-changing, and we're changing with it,'' Brian Luciano said as he took a cigarette break from his job at Copy Cop in Boston. In four of five states where pay phones already are deregulated - Iowa, Nebraska, North Dakota and Wyoming - users pay 35 cents a call. In the fifth, South Dakota, they pay a quarter. |
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