Pressure on for Cutting Cellular Rates : Communications: PUC questions why prices in California have not dropped since the service began.

The state Public Utilities Commission on Wednesday unanimously approved a plan aimed at spurring cellular telephone operators into lowering their rates, now among the highest in the nation.

If the operators don’t respond within 60 days, commission Chairman Daniel Fessler has already said, state regulators will step in and do the job for them.

“The barrier to lower rates, if it ever existed, is gone,” Fessler said Wednesday. “We’re going to wait now to be stupefied by what the industry does.”

Cellular operators had claimed that prices have remained high for three key reasons: a need to generate cash to expand the network, continuing high consumer acceptance of the service at current prices, and a fear that any cuts could not be restored in the future.

On Wednesday, the commission erased the industry’s inability to easily raise prices again if necessary. The PUC action allows carriers to restore any price cuts without regulatory approval.

The PUC’s move is the result of its nearly 3-year-old investigation into why cellular rates in California, home to more wireless subscribers than any other state, remain at the same high levels as when the service was introduced here in 1984.

According to a nationwide survey of cellular fees by Paul Kagan Associates, a media research firm, PacTel Cellular and L.A. Cellular, the two franchisees in Southern California, both charge customers an identical $107.10 per month for 150 minutes of network usage, the fifth-highest rate in the country. The survey results assume that 80% of the time was billed at the companies’ identical charges of 45 cents per minute for peak-time calls and that the remaining 20% was billed at their 27-cent-a-minute, off-peak rate.

The state’s largest cellular operators praised the commission’s action, but kept mum on their rate plans. “We’re always looking for ways to respond to our customers,” said a representative of PacTel Cellular. “Pricing flexibility gives us some opportunity.”

Michael Heil, president of L.A. Cellular, another major carrier, said his company has offered promotional rates in the past and will be offering them in the future. However, he said he could not commit to anything more specific.

“We will continue to be competitive and promotional,” Heil said. “Over the long term rates will drop.”