THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, November 17, 1995 TAG: 9511170174
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D2 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DAVE MAYFIELD, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Short : 44 lines
GTE Corp. said Thursday that it will make changes to a rate-restructuring proposal it filed last June for its Virginia customers. The decision came after GTE customers overwhelmingly opposed the proposal in letters and petitions to the State Corporation Commission.
The state's second-largest phone company behind Bell Atlantic Corp. didn't specify the planned changes in its rate proposal. It said the changes will be filed with the commission next week.
GTE proposed to widen the local calling areas for most of its Virginia customers, thus reducing their long-distance bills. But it also would increase those same customers' basic monthly phone bills, in some cases substantially. And it proposed increases in fees for directory assistance and pay-phone calls.
The corporation commission said that 98 percent of the more than 21,000 customers who commented on the plan in letters or petitions opposed it. Opposition wasn't nearly as intense from customers in Virginia Beach, Chesapeake, Suffolk and western Tidewater, the commission said.
GTE's South Hampton Roads customers would see small basic monthly rate increases - at least compared to GTE customers in other parts of the state. In return, they would receive a wider local calling territory. Most of the Peninsula would be added to the South Hampton Roads GTE customers' local calling area.
Elsewhere in the state, however, rate increases were a bigger issue, GTE conceded in a statement Thursday.
The phone company said customers may want to skip a Nov. 28 corporation commission hearing in Richmond on the rate plan if they don't have full information on the latest changes in GTE's proposal.
It pointed out that public hearings are planned in early 1996 in six other Virginia communities, and said that by then information on the latest changes should be fully disseminated. The closest hearings to Hampton Roads are scheduled in Franklin March 6. by CNB