SECTION: Section 4; Page 22, Column 1; Editorial Desk

LENGTH: 379 words

HEADLINE: Why Calls Should Cost a Quarter

BODY:
   A quarter for a coin phone?

Local calls from a public phone already cost a quarter in 19 states and 20 cents in 13 others. But New Yorkers are deeply attached to the dime call. Seven times in 14 years, politically minded regulators have denied appeals for an increase.

Some intracity calls were finally designated to cost 30 cents, but most still go for a dime, the same price charged in 1951. So New York Telephone is back, asking for a quarter, and now, more than ever before, the Public Service Commission should relent. Pay-phone service costs the company nearly three times the dime it charges. There is simply no justification for requiring all other phone users to make up the difference.

When New York's pay-phone calls went from a nickel to a dime, a first-class letter cost 3 cents and a subway ride 15 cents. Why, then, the emotional resistance to paying more for a call?

Once upon a time, the protesters could claim that an additional charge might jeopardize public safety: The lack of an extra coin might prevent people from calling the police or fire department. But today, almost all pay phones allow emergency dial- ing without any coin, and the remaining 6 percent will be converted within two years. New York Attorney General Robert Abrams has another objection. He says higher coin-phone charges would harm the poor, who lack phones of their own. Yet 97 percent of all New Yorkers, including most poor people, have access to a home phone. And the overwhelming majority of pay-phone calls are made by people of average means or better - travelers and people en route to work. Keeping pay phones cheap means offsetting the losses with an extra $1.20 monthly charge on all other phones. Most of the beneficiaries of that are middle-income customers, and some of the biggest losers are poor people with home phones. The better, more direct way to assure universal access to a phone is to approve the proposed ''lifeline'' service, offering home phones and a severely limited number of calls for about $4 a month.Easy access to coin phones is an invaluable convenience. But there's no reason to keep asking homeowners in Plattsburg and shopkeepers in the Bronx to subsidize the convenience of commuters at Grand Central Terminal.
 
 

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH