AT&T; Plans New Fee for Residential Lines

AT&T; Corp. will begin charging residential long-distance customers a fee to help pay for low-cost phone service and cheap Internet hookups for schools, libraries and rural health-care facilities. The fee, beginning in July, will be based on a percentage of monthly bills for long-distance calls. Residential customers will be assessed 5% of total monthly charges for interstate long-distance and international calls, and 1.8% of monthly charges for intrastate long-distance, an AT&T; spokesman said. The so-called universal service connectivity charge is designed to recover AT&T;’s share of government-imposed payments to support universally available phone service and discounted Internet hookups, he said. AT&T; business customers have been charged a 4.9% fee for the programs since January.