DATE: Wednesday, March 5, 1997              TAG: 9703050652

SECTION: BUSINESS                PAGE: D1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY DAVE MAYFIELD, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH                    LENGTH:   52 lines

SWITCHING LONG-DISTANCE CARRIERS PAYS OFF - BIG - FOR BEACH FAMILY

Just about anybody who has switched long-distance phone companies more than once has benefited from being fickle. Twenty-five dollars here. One-hundred dollars there. Such are the rewards the long-distance competitors have bestowed upon those who switch to their services.

Beach residents Timothy and Judy Sexton got more than that - quite a bit more.

On Monday, the Sextons collected a cool 1 million free miles on the airline of their choice - the reward for their having become a few weeks ago the 1 millionth customer of GTE Corp.'s long-distance service.

GTE flew the couple and their young son, Jordan, to its phone-company headquarters near Dallas to give them the prize. There were speeches, photos, fancy food and a visit to Texas Stadium, home of Tim Sexton's beloved Dallas Cowboys.

Then on Tuesday, the Sextons were back in the workaday world. Tim is a plumber apprentice. Judy, his wife of three years, is a nail technician. She's prodigious at pedicures.

They don't earn the kind of money that allows one to simply pick up and fly to distant places.

Nevertheless, Tim Sexton said Tuesday - after work - that he'd done a little thinking about it. ``There's a lot of places I'd like to go to,'' he said. ``We haven't been on a honeymoon yet. . . . I'd like to go to Hawaii.''

That would be a drop in their air-mile bucket. The couple could make 50 round-trips to Hawaii before they would exhaust their mileage credit.

Sexton was surprised to have won the big prize. ``I've never won anything before,'' he said.

They were already customers of GTE's local phone service. So adding the company's long-distance service - which became available a year ago - was a natural.

``We wanted to have the long-distance and the local on the same bill,'' Tim Sexton said.

GTE's success in the long-distance wars has made it a darling of telecommunications analysts. But it has further stirred the already-rancorous long-distance industry.

GTE and market leader, AT&T Corp., whose market share is eroding, have traded lawsuits over their advertising assaults against one another.

To boost its sagging bottom line, AT&T said Monday that it will sharply cut bonuses it pays to customers who switch to its service. ILLUSTRATION: [Color photo]

GTE's long-distance president, Rob McCoy, left, and telephone

operations president, Tom White, far right, give 1 million free

airline miles to the firm's 1 millionth long-distance customers Judy

and Timothy Sexton, with son Jordan.

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