Split Decision Takes a Toll on Phone Company Foe : Consumers: A woman who fought AT&T;’s rate structure for 17 years gets a partial victory. Now she’s giving up the fight.

A woman bugged about paying toll charges just to talk to her daughter six miles away has won a 17-year battle to get the phone company to change its rate structure. But she won’t fully share in the victory.

Estelle Simon, 70, of rural Sudbury, can call her daughter’s town of Marlboro free, but Sudbury residents still will be charged for calling Lincoln, which shares a high school with Sudbury, because of the way the system is wired.

“Can you believe this?” Simon said in an interview. “I blew my top.”

In fact, there will still be a charge to call the local crisis line six miles away in Acton.

“People who are about to commit suicide are not going to make a toll call,” Simon scoffed.

Simon decided to take on AT&T--then; the largest corporation in the world--in 1973 when her daughter moved a toll call away to neighboring Marlboro.

“I realized there was a lot wrong with the telephone company,” she said.

Waging battle singlehandedly in rate hearings and regulatory proceedings before the state Department of Public Utilities, Simon argued that small-town residents were subsidizing the phone service of people in big cities.

All paid the same $9 for basic service, but big-city dwellers could reach more phones free. Until 1984, in fact, customers in 93 communities, including Sudbury, were even charged for calls within the same town.

Thanks to Simon, New England Telephone Co. on Oct. 19 will eliminate toll charges for calls between neighboring exchanges and reduce rates for other in-state calls. The ruling affects more than 100 exchanges around the state.

Public utilities officials had said during the battle that Simon’s case was so well documented that New England Telephone would probably be forced to overhaul its whole rate structure.

Under the new rates, a four-minute morning call from Brimfield to Williamstown in western Massachusetts on a weekday will fall from $1.11 to 23 cents. A four-minute call at the same time of day from Boston to New York costs 87 cents over AT&T.;

The phone company also eliminated the toll for calling Marlboro.

Simon said her battle with the phone company is over.

“I see no reason for me to go downtown and tell the whole story over again,” she said. “All they have to do is look at the case. They know I’m right.”

Before she stepped out of the ring, however, Simon forced New England Telephone to stop misleading advertisements that promised toll-free calls between all bordering communities.

“They do these things,” Simon said. “But nobody fights back.”