Pacts Raise Costs of Pager Calls

Pacific Bell this week started charging customers for calls made to certain non-toll-free pagers, eliminating special provisions that often made those calls free for California customers.

As of Monday, customers are being charged an average of 6 cents each for calls to pagers with certain regional phone numbers. In the past, when a PacBell customer made a local-toll call to a pager, those costs were covered by the paging companies, which paid PacBell for the calls through special agreements and bulk-rate discounts.

But PacBell has discontinued those discounts, and under new agreements that just took effect for many major paging companies, calls to pagers will now ring up local-toll charges when the number dialed is beyond roughly 12 miles yet not far enough to be long-distance. Calls to toll-free pager numbers (those beginning with 800, or 888 or 877) arenot affected by the change.

Customers throughout PacBell’s vast California service area were notified of the switch recently through phone company newsletters and notices printed on phone bills. It is unclear how many people will be affected, because the assessment of local-toll charges depends on the location of the caller and the location of the pager’s assigned number.

Deciphering the boundaries for local-toll calls--which are defined as more than 12 miles away but short of long-distance range--has long been a frustrating task for callers. But in general, consumers can expect to be billed for local-toll charges when they dial a pager that has a nearby but not a local phone number.

PacBell’s toll-call charges typically range from 6 to 10 cents per minute, depending on the time of day and the call’s distance. The average price is 6.25 cents per minute, the company said. Other carriers, typically long-distance companies, also offer toll-call service.

The new charges--although they amount to just pennies per call--already have some customers worked up.

“A lot of my contacts are by pager, and I would say this will cost me an extra $5 a month,” said a PacBell customer who lives in the San Fernando Valley and works in the film business, but who did not want to be identified. “It will also affect parents and kids, because many of them use pagers now to keep in touch.”

GTE, the state’s second-largest local phone company, continues to have agreements with some paging companies that absorb local-toll charges for consumers calling a pager. However, GTE said the toll-call policy varies depending on the pager company.

PacBell was among the first local phone companies to stop offering the old-style contract that made the local-toll fees invisible to consumers calling pagers. The phone company wanted to make the change in late 1998, but then agreed to wait until Nov. 1, 1999, to give paging companies more time to adjust, according to Steven Jacoby, chief operating officer for Metrocall, an Alexandria, Va.-based paging firm with about 5.8 million subscribers nationwide.

Bell Atlantic and other local phone companies are following suit nationwide, Jacoby said. But so far, both the paging companies and PacBell are downplaying the effect on consumers.

“We do not believe it’s going to have a big impact on people, but it depends on each customer and what their calling patterns may be,” Jacoby said.

Still, amid phone number supply problems, some paging companies have issued numbers to some customers that are outside their free calling range. That may have had little impact before, but now calls to those pagers could result in extra charges. That would be especially true if the assigned pager number is a local toll-call away from the people who page the customer most often, such as callers from the customer’s work or home.

Upon request, most paging companies will work to shift customers to more appropriate pager numbers should that happen. Of course, that requires the user to change numbers and notify others of the change.