Consumers Union warns
against hikes in payphone charges

AUSTIN, TX - In response to a petition by the Texas Payphone Association to allow payphone operators to charge for local calls based on the length of the call, Consumers Union today urged the Public Utility Commission to maintain its current prohibition on time sensitivity in local payphone pricing.

Removing the prohibition on pricing payphone calls by time has the same effect as increasing the price of many payphone calls without the publicity that would come from a flat rate increase to 75 cents or a dollar, CU senior policy analyst Janee Briesemeister said.

"Instead of pay phones, we'll have pay and pay and pay-some-more phones," she added.

Filed Sept. 14, the TPA petition seeks to amend the PUC's payphone rules on the grounds that the state's prohibition against time-based pricing violates the 1996 Federal Telecommunications Act.

The PUC has received, and refused, similar requests from the payphone industry in the past. When the current rules were adopted in 1997, the TPA and several Texas phone companies sought to have the prohibition on time sensitive pricing removed from the rules. The PUC rejected the request, determining that time sensitivity on calls is a consumer protection left to the states.

In a response filed today with the PUC, Briesemeister calls on the Commission to reject TPA's petition, consistent with its previous rejections of such requests, and emphasizes that the rule in question offers crucial consumer protections to the approximately 445,000 Texas households that don't have their own phones.

Such low-income families depend on payphones for their day-to-day business, often with little control over the length of the essential calls.

"Those families who rely heavily on payphones can neither predict nor control the amount of time they may be transferred from one party to another or put on hold when making a necessary call," the statement says. "It is clear those consumers who can least afford it are most likely to end up paying more under time sensitive pricing."

The CU statement praises the Commission for historically demonstrating concern about payphone prices and consumer protections.

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