Molly Ivins August 18

AUSTIN, Texas — Helpful hint for newsies suicidal at the thought of Life Without Monica: Consider the phone company.

No, you say, not the phone company! The phone company has no sex, no dress with DNA, no ... Hush, poor dears. The phone company has just come up with a plan so breathtaking in its imaginative reach, so startling, so profound yet so subtle and compassionate that I feel sure it will change all our lives in ways we cannot even begin to grasp.

AT&T is about to start charging us for not making long-distance calls. Yes, you read that correctly. If we don't make enough long-distance calls, AT&T will charge us $3 a month. Those of you who keep trying to hold down your long-distance charges can forget it — the phone company is going to get your money anyway.

You say you don't know a soul who lives farther away than the other side of town? You say that when you want to reach out and touch your loved ones, or even your congressman, you take pen in hand, write a letter and put it in the mail? You say you're a cyber-ace and use e-mail for all your correspondence? Well, you are out of luck, buddy, because the phone company is going to get your money anyway.

The poor phone company says it is losing money on the 15 percent to 20 percent of its 70 million customers who won't spring for three bucks' worth of long distance every month because it has to send them bills every month for their piddly 75 cents or $1.50 worth of calls. You can understand that, can't you? Just because these people pay a basic service rate every month, hey, what's that to the phone company?

According to the Associated Press, AT&T needs to invest billions of dollars to upgrade the cable TV lines it acquired in a merger with TeleCommunications Inc. And why shouldn't telephone customers who may not have or may not ever want cable TV pay for that, huh?

I see this as a coming trend: Should you want to help out AT&T's pitifully inadequate revenues by subscribing to its new cable TV service, it will then charge you if you don't watch enough cable. The power company will charge you for not using enough electricity. I think we can even spread this beyond utilities and service industries: The Gap can start charging us for not wearing jeans often enough, McDonald's for not eating enough burgers. The possibilities are endless: Truly, this is a revolutionary concept.

Brian Adamik, a telephone industry analyst with the Yankee Group, a Boston research firm, told AP: "AT&T doesn't want to be the service provider for little old lady with tennis shoes. They want to be the company that provides a wide range of services to profitable customers." Right, sure, of course.

What could be more understandable?

"There has never been the notion of paying for access to long distance, and that is what this introduces," Samuel Simon, chairman of the Telecommunications Research and Action Center in Washington, told the Los Angeles Times. "No matter how you look at it, a lot of people will be paying money for not doing anything." Well! What a grump.

It's not as though the phone company were just ripping people off for three bucks a month for not using long distance; for example, if you make $2.50 worth of long-distance calls, the phone company will only nick you for another 50 cents, and you have to admit, that's awfully nice.

And besides, consider the phone company's concern for poor people. You know how unfashionable it is to care about the poor these days. The government isn't interested, the media couldn't care less, and Congress just threw another 1 million children into poverty and slapped itself on the back for doing so. But the phone company cares; AT&T says it will exempt people from the minimum fee if they can prove they are low-income consumers.

According to AP, to qualify, customers must be enrolled in a state telephone assistance program, contact a toll-free AT&T number and provide proof of eligibility. So if the taxpayers are already paying the phone bill for some poor family, they won't get nicked for another three bucks a month just because the poor family is not being profligate with its teeny subsidy, see? Isn't that sweet?

Texans, of course, have particular reason to be fond of AT&T these days; many of us signed up with AT&T's One-Rate Plan or One Rate Plus, advertised as 15 cents a minute or 10 cents a minute for long distance — unless (Whoa! Surprise!) you call long distance inside Texas, and then, the phone company doesn't care if it sticks its thumb in the governor's eye.

According to The Dallas Morning News, on June 1, AT&T filed a rate increase with the Texas Public Utility Commission to jack up the One Rate by 26 percent, to 19 cents a minute, and the One Rate Plus by 50 percent, to 15 cents a minute. And you were supposed to be aware of this because AT&T placed 1-inch-by-2-inch ads in six newspapers around Texas. (Read those truss ads carefully, friends.) The PUC has gotten more than 1,200 complaints about it, says the News. Oh, those AT&T folks, they can waltz across Texas, can't they?

Isn't deregulation grand? According to Business Week, the Federal Communications Commission says its phone-related complaints have gone up 25 percent since 1996, when the wondrous Telecommunications Act was passed. I do wish people would stop complaining about this wonderful law. Just look at all the wonderful mergers that have resulted and all the wonderful pay and package increases for top executives. Just try being a little unselfish and happy for others, would you?

Molly Ivins is a columnist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. To find out more about Molly Ivins and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com.

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