Web Comes to Rescue of Dazed Local-Toll Callers

With California’s local toll call phone market now open to competition, per-minute prices are expected to be lower, but confusion is likely to be higher.

Pricing the calls that travel more than 12 miles yet not far enough to qualify as long-distance has always been a challenge. They typically cost from 4 cents to 15 cents per minute. But the price depends on the distance, time of day and duration of the call, as well as the vagaries of California’s calling boundaries.

Now there is help. The state’s Office of Ratepayer Advocates, or ORA, an independent arm of the California Public Utilities Commission, has teamed up with San Francisco-based Salestar, a telecommunications market research firm, to provide consumers with a free toll-call pricing aid via the Internet.

The Salestar Webpricer, launched Friday and updated weekly, compares the residential and small-business pricing plans offered by several major phone companies, including AT&T;, GTE, MCI WorldCom, Pacific Bell and Sprint. Customers can enter as many as six frequently called phone numbers to find the best prices from the list.

The Webpricer can be found through the ORA site, https://ora.ca.gov or through the Salestar site, https://www.salestar.com.