27,000 to Be Assigned Long-Distance Service

About 26,800 Burbank and Sherman Oaks customers of Pacific Bell who failed to choose a long-distance service will be assigned one today by the telephone company, a Pacific Bell spokeswoman said Saturday.

Under new federal equal-access rules that took effect June 1, 1985, customers were given six months to choose one of up to 12 long-distance telephone services.

About 16,000 of the 59,000 phone customers in Burbank and 10,800 of the 27,000 customers in Sherman Oaks failed to return their forms by the Dec. 3 deadline and will be affected by the ruling, spokeswoman Lissa Zanville said.

Residents in parts of Los Angeles, Compton and Beverly Hills also will receive carrier assignments today, Zanville said. A $5.26 one-time fee will be charged to customers who wish to change their assigned carrier, she said.

The equal-access process resulted from the court-ordered breakup of American Telephone & Telegraph Co.’s long-distance monopoly and from the entry of other firms into the field.

The changeovers are made randomly by prefix numbers, Zanville said. In the parts of Burbank with an 818 area code, customers to be affected today are those with phone prefixes 840 through 843, 845, 846, 848, 953 and 954; those affected in the 213 area have an 849 prefix. In Sherman Oaks, those affected have prefixes 784, 789, 905, 906 and 995.