Word: fcc
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Communications Commission has received 14,000 letters of complaint about phone service, 400% more than usual. Biggest gripe: slowness in installing new lines. The central message in most of the mail has less to do with actual shortcomings than with a changing attitude toward the phone company. Says an FCC staffer: "People feel the phone company is less friendly. If the new companies squander the service image that AT&T gave them, it will be very expensive to rebuild...
Service problems are showing up in urban areas, most intensely in New York City, particularly for business customers. Officials of both AT&T and NYNEX, the holding company for phone operations in New York and most of New England, acknowledged to the FCC in March that service to New York City's corporate customers has declined, but said they intend to bring it back to normal levels by July. With a backlog of 20,000 orders, there is now a wait of up to six weeks for high-volume discount wide-area telecommunications service (WATS) lines and 800 numbers...
True to predictions by many experts, telephone rates have gone up, by an average of 37%, since divestiture, says the FCC. Price increases by Bell Atlantic, the holding company for telephone operations in six Eastern states and the District of Columbia, are typical. Its flat-rate charge for phone service jumped nearly 30% in Pennsylvania, the lowest monthly rate rising from $9.60 to $12.28. It has begun installing message-unit service in some areas, basing tolls on time and distance of calls. The company increased pay-phone charges from a nickel to 15? in the District of Columbia, and from...
...about news coverage. Objections arose: editors feared that unfavorable verdicts might provoke libel suits; broadcasters did not want any prejudging of matters that might come before the Federal Communications Commission. So anyone filing a complaint had to agree not to sue for libel or take his case to the FCC later. If the council censured a newspaper, that paper did not have to print the findings. The watchdog could bark but was not allowed to bite...
...another, more subtle way, both politicians and telephone industry executives welcomed the FCC's move. It meant that the access charge issue was being taken back by the commission and away from Congress, where the politically sensitive subject had always rested uneasily. Said a relieved aide: "The FCC is the right place to untangle these complex questions...