THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, March 6, 1996 TAG: 9603060849
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY LINDA MCNATT, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: ISLE OF WIGHT LENGTH: Long : 124 lines
Last April, Randy Philpott exchanged the cost of his monthly phone bill for an office, a secretary and a daily commute across the James River Bridge.
Until then, Philpott was operating Time Plus, a computer time-keeping and payroll service, out of his Isle of Wight County home near Smithfield. But the phone and computer connection bills necessary to keep the business going got so big that he was forced to move.
``I had 23 clients by then, and my monthly phone bills were right at $1,000 a month,'' he said.
For years, Isle of Wight has tried to change things with petitions and legislation. Now, the county and many of its residents are supporting a statewide sweep of telephone rate changes proposed by GTE Corp., which serves much of rural Hampton Roads and is the state's second-largest phone company behind Bell Atlantic.
County residents will have a chance to speak out today at 3:30 p.m. and 7 p.m. at the Franklin High School Auditorium when the State Corporation Commission holds a public hearing on the proposed changes.
Philpott is just one of a growing number of business owners who either pass by Isle of Wight County or move after they realize how expensive a phone connection can be in the rural county sandwiched between Suffolk and the Peninsula, said Connie Rhodes, executive director of the Isle of Wight/Smithfield/Windsor Chamber of Commerce.
``Businesses in Isle of Wight County have been held hostage by the telephone company,'' she said.
GTE has offered to expand the calling area in many of Western Tidewater's rural communities in exchange for increased monthly charges. When the phone company's first proposal came out, many of the citizens in rural communities faced paying nearly double what they have paid for years.
But in November, the company came back with a more moderate proposal. Rates will still go up, but not as much as originally proposed. Increases would remain comparatively modest in the company's heavier populated service areas, like Virginia Beach and Chesapeake.
GTE residential customers in southern Virginia Beach would pay $3.38 a month more for flat-rate service under GTE's new proposal, a 25 percent increase. In turn, they could call Suffolk and Peninsula numbers at no extra cost.
For a monthly increase of a little over $4, GTE customers in Chesapeake, mostly around Great Bridge, could call the Peninsula, Suffolk and the Smithfield and Windsor exchanges in Isle of Wight.
In Windsor, phone bills would increase by $10.14 a month, but for the higher monthly fee, Windsor residents could phone homes and businesses from Franklin to Virginia Beach plus the Peninsula. And, for the first time, they could call neighboring Smithfield without paying long-distance charges.
Smithfield would get a similar plan, with connections to the Peninsula and the Norfolk-Portsmouth area.
That's not the case in Franklin. Residential rates there would increase from $8.42 a month to $15.73, but extended calling would be restricted to Windsor, Smithfield, Ivor and parts of Suffolk.
That's why some rural areas adjacent to Isle of Wight feel they are getting less for more, and they're just not happy with the bargain.
Many Surry County residents, for example, want to call outside the six different exchange areas that cover the county, said Claude Reeson, heading a governmental affairs committee for the county Chamber of Commerce, but Reeson said he doesn't feel the sweeping proposal has a chance of being approved by the SCC.
``If enough people are screaming loud enough, something will be done,'' Reeson said. ``But the long-distance carriers are likely to kill it.''
That's part of what is making it all so complicated, Reeson said. The SCC is proposing rules that will, as early as the second half of 1996, end long-established monopolies enjoyed by local phone companies in Virginia.
Philpott used some of those long-distance carriers to try to make his business more affordable to run in Isle of Wight, until he finally gave up and moved over the bridge.
And the phone situation isn't only hurting commercial and industrial growth in Isle of Wight, which joined the Hampton Roads Metropolitan Statistical Area in 1990, said Alan Monette, who heads a chamber ad hoc committee looking into the phone situation, but it's hurting standards of education as well.
Local schools have invested heavily to improve technology, Monette said, but connections to outside sources are too costly.
Monette said he understands what GTE is trying to do, and he understands that the company hasn't had a rate hike in Virginia for more than a decade, but if the current proposal doesn't go through, he hopes the corporation commission will look for another solution.
``We've tried very hard to work this out to the point that we think we've got a program that looks proper for our community,'' he said. ``We hope GTE won't throw the entire plan out like the baby with the bathwater. Isle of Wight would like to become the forerunner with ways that can be worked out in other communities. It's really affecting people's lives out here.''
Monette said he would like to see the SCC allow Isle of Wight to become a pilot for the rest of the state. ``Let it go into effect immediately here without further debate,'' he said. ``Then, GTE and the SCC can work out the differences as they go around the state.''
The SCC will hold another public hearing on the matter in Richmond on March 26. Meanwhile, the regulatory agency is waiting for GTE to supply additional billing data, so the date of the main hearing to be held in Richmond has been delayed until June 17. A final decision isn't likely to come until sometime this fall.
And Philpott is waiting to move back home. ``I'm already looking into office space back over there,'' he said from Newport News on Tuesday. ``I definitely don't want to drive that bridge everyday for the rest of my life.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
Randy Philpott ...
[SIDE BAR}
Rate Changes
[GTE customers in :
Va. Beach
Chesapeake
Windsor
Smithfield
Franklin
Public Hearings
Proposed Changes will considered by the SCC today at 3:30 p.m. and 7
p.m. at the Franklin High School auditorium.
KEYWORDS: TELEPHONE RATES GTE by CNB