Calling Long-Distance? After This Brief Message

The telephone, the last sanctuary of private communications in the Information Age, is about to be invaded by advertising.

Former MCI Communications Inc. executive Perry Kamel, who has an eye for unusual promotional opportunities, is launching a long-distance service called FreeWay that offers callers free minutes for every commercial message they hear.

Meanwhile, a number of small calling card firms, including one called Free for All Systems Inc. in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., are offering free long-distance calls to consumers willing to listen to 20-second commercials during long-distance conversations.

Most major long-distance carriers vow they will never permit advertising on their phone lines. But the activity has caught the eye of a few carriers, including long-distance giant AT&T; Corp., which already has a recorded voice telling customers the time in the region they are calling to.

Company spokesman Burke Stinson said AT&T; “would not rule out” expanding the use of the short pause it takes to connect a call or launching an advertiser-supported service similar to FreeWay.

“In today’s communications environment, only a fool rules things out altogether,” Stinson said.

FreeWay, which has been test-marketed since April by Pittsburgh-based Duquesne Enterprises and Broadpoint Communications of Landover, Md., allows customers to make a free call by dialing an 800 number. Customers then enter a special identification code and the number they want to reach. They then are required to listen to a brief commercial message, earning two free minutes of talk time for each message heard.

“Our members are volunteering to hear messages for something of tangible value. We’ve gotten a very positive response so far,” Kamel said.

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Phone users, of course, have long been assaulted by advertisements and promotions while waiting on hold on business customer-service lines. But for more than half a century, phone calls have largely been a sanctuary from the onslaught of ads and promotional messages that television viewers, radio listeners, e-mail users and Web surfers endure.

A spokeswoman for the Federal Communications Commission said the agency does not regulate advertising on long-distance calls, adding that the agency deregulated the long-distance industry years ago.

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But the rising interest in advertising during telephone calls has alarmed some consumer advocates, who maintain that the government should regulate it. They say the practice runs counter to the spirit, if not the letter, of the law that calls for phone companies to provide unfettered “common carriage” of private communications.

“AT&T; and other phone companies are common carriers; they must transmit your information for you, for hire,” said Gene Kimmelman, co-director of the Washington office of Consumers Union. “Adding their own message to your [telephone] communications channel ought to be reviewed by regulators as inconsistent with their responsibility in law to just transmit your messages without interference.”

The five-to-10-second pause before the completion of a long-distance telephone connection represents just one of the possible opportunities for corporations to peddle their wares over phone lines, experts say.

Washington communications lawyer Leonard J. Kennedy noted, for example, that carriers could air ads during the pauses after customers key in their calling card numbers or during the wait for directory assistance. “We haven’t seen the real onslaught yet; people are just now beginning to think about how to market in these kind of spaces,” Kennedy said.

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However, many experts say it will be an uphill battle marketing advertiser-supported dialing when long-distance calls are already priced as low as 10 cents a minute.

“Advertising seems to be everywhere, but I don’t know how much demand we can expect to see for services like these,” said John Kamp, senior vice president at the American Assn. of Advertising Agencies in Washington.

“I wouldn’t be a bit surprised that if phone companies increase ‘hang time’ ” to deliver these advertising messages during calls, “they may very well be left with a lot of customers choosing to hang up instead of waiting for a call to complete.”

Times staff writer Jube Shiver Jr. can be reached by e-mail at jube.shiver@latimes.com.