AT&T Wants State Agency to Raise Local, Private Phone Company Rates

REYNOLDS, Georgia (41NBC/WMGT) – AT&T is asking a state agency to force a small, privately owned Middle Georgia telephone company to raise its rates.

Public Service Telephone Company is a family owned phone provider that serves residents and businesses from the Columbus city limits to the Macon city limits. AT&T wants the Georgia Public Service Commission to force the private company to raise its rates because AT&T says it is getting too much funding from the state.

Charlie Westberry is the president of South Side Communications in Roberta. He has two land lines at his business and says he likes the service he gets from the Public Service Telephone Company (PSTC).

“There’s nothing like hometown service. You’ve got to have it. We live in small town America,” Westberry said.

AT&T wants the Georgia Public Service Commission, which regulates PSTC, to raise business and feature rates.

“The number of subscribers that we serve per square mile is low and that means it is high cost for use to provide service to those areas,” Kelly Bond, president of PSTC, said.

To help make up those costs, the PSTC receives money from the state’s Universal Access Fund. Every telephone user pays into this fund through a built in fee in the telephone rates.

“The fund is there to maintain reasonable rates in rural Georgia and it is there to make up for loss revenue for different things that have happened legislatively over the years,” Bond said.

PSTC says raising rates would mean not getting as much state funding. It also says that means AT&T would not have to pay as much into the Universal Access Fund.

If this happens, Westberry says he’s worried about his business and his bottom line.

“If they raise this its probably going to raise my phone bill $125 a month,” Westberry said. “What does that mean to you?” 41 NBC asked. “Net profit.”

Both A T and T and PSTC presented its case to the Georgia Public Service Commission earlier this week. Now the companies are waiting for a decision which may not come until October.

AT&T released the following statement:

In the rate case held before the Georgia Public Service Commission yesterday, AT&T proposed that Public Service Telephone (PST) be granted the authority to raise their business line rates and calling feature rates to the levels rural customers in AT&T and Windstream areas pay. The Georgia PSC initiated these rate cases to review the rates of PST and the other two companies that requested and received more than $1 million from the Georgia Universal Access Fund (UAF) in 2011. PST received $2.4 million from this fund last year to help subsidize their company.  The Georgia UAF is funded by telecommunications companies and their customers, and starting next year, it will be shown as a line item on customers’ telephone bills. AT&T is not opposed to properly sized UAF disbursements, but we do not believe our residential and business customers, including all of those here in Macon, should be paying extra subsidies to keep Public Service Telephone Company’s business line rates and calling feature rates lower than those paid by other rural customers in Georgia.  AT&T is fine with PST leaving their rates right where they are, as long as they net the difference between what they currently charge and what they could charge out of their UAF request in future years. It’s unfair for our customers and the customers of other companies who pay into the UAF, many of whom are rural and/or low-income customers themselves, to subsidize another company’s customers, specifically so that company can continue charging rates that are well below the statewide average. It was the intent of the Georgia General Assembly when they created the fund that this subsidy be reduced over time, but unfortunately it has gone up significantly over the years.