OCR Text |
Show Independent phone companies plan major expenditures The nation's Independent telephone companies will spend $2.7 billion for new facilities and equipment to expand and improve service this year, the U.S. Independent Independ-ent Telephone Association forecasts. This projection and many other statistical indications of continued growth for the 1,600 non-Bell System operating operat-ing telephone companies are contained in the new Phone Facts '77 just published. Continental Telephone Company of the West reports it will spend $2,400,000 for new facilities in Utah in 1977. The company served 18,801 Utah phones at the end of 1976 and forecasts a 7.5 percent increase for this year. PhoneFacts forecasts an industry in-dustry growth of 5 percent in telephones in 1977, bringing total Independent phones to over 29V million and -total plant investment to almost $25 billion. Total 1977 operating revenues reven-ues of $7 billion are projected, an increase of 11 percent. The Independent telephone companies serve approximately approxi-mately one out of five phones and cover over half the "telephone "tele-phone territory" of the nation. PhoneFacts '77 reports that in the last five years charges for residential phone service, including long distance, dis-tance, have gone up only half as much as the Consumer Price Index-the all-time measure mea-sure of consumer goods and services. But the booklet cautions cau-tions that rate increases up to 60 percent, exclusive of inflation, infla-tion, for basic residential and business service are likely in the next decade because of recent federal policy decisions encouraging competition in the tele-communications industry. in-dustry. The Independent and Bell System telephone companies, labor unions, and farm and consumer-oriented groups are supporting legislation in Con-gress-the Consumer Communications Comm-unications Reform Act of 1977-to define the true public interest in relation to these Federal Communications Commission decisions. Some 100 congressmen already have joined as co-sponsors, and the House Communications Communica-tions Subcommittee has undertaken un-dertaken a basic review of telecommunications policy. |