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From: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu (TELECOM Moderator)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Illinois Bell Reduces Rates For Poor People
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Date: 5 Jan 91 16:49:43 GMT
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X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 11, Issue 9, Message 1 of 8


Beginning February 1, phone companies in Illinois will reduce phone
bills by $6.72 per month for poor people, but raise bills 15 cents for
everyone else.  According to the brochure now being circulated to the
estimated 620,000 low-income residents in our state, this will appear
each month on phone bills as a 'reduction for low-income customers'.

To qualify for the program, called Link-Up II, a phone subscriber must
participate in a low-income program such as food stamps, the Illinois
general assistance program, or Aid to Families with Dependent
Children.

Half the funding for the monthly reduction will come from federal
funds, and half from a fifteen cent monthly charge imposed on the
other customers of the telcos.

The program is designed to ensure that everyone can afford basic phone
service. Illinois Bell estimates tbat about 95 percent of all
households in its territory have phones.

The amount of the subsidy and offsetting customer charge is detirmined
by a forumula set by the federal government. Illinois Bell states they
had nothing to do with setting the amount or the method in which the
subsidy would be collected. 

Currently, the minimum monthly phone bill in Chicago and densely
populated suburbs is about $10 for a customer who does not have
Touch-Tone or custom calling services. The minimum charge is about
$12.50 in most other suburbs of northern Illinois. The $6.72 per
subscriber reduction will come off these amounts.

A second phone subsidy for low-income residents which is already in
effect pays for half ($27.50) of the $55.00 service installation
charge. This subsidy is funded by the federal government.

It seems like the more things change in the telecom industry, the more
they stay the same: Here we are coming back to the concept laid out by
Ted Vail at the start of the twentieth century, that universal
telephone service is a desirable goal. 

But Vail and his associates said *all* residence service should be
subsidized by business service. The main reason that business service
has always been more expensive than residential service in the USA is
because of the belief of early telephone people that universal service
was desirable for all, and especially desirable from the point of view
of business subscribers.  Business places would find phone service
particularly useful if they could call residences.  So let the
businesses pay the subsidy to insure phone service for all, argued
Vail, and that thinking has prevailed since.

What happens when *I* can no longer afford my phone service? 

Patrick Townson