OCR Text |
Show Changes already being felt in Mtn. Bell-AT&T separation to occur Oct. 31. Wallace said that after the first of the year Utah customers will begin receiving an expanded telephone bill required by the divestiture. The format will group separately the categories of service the customer is receiving from Mountain Bell, AT&T equipment charges, AT&T long distance charges, and possibly charges from other suppliers. "The customer will continue to make one payment to Mountain Bell for all charges on the bill. The company will be the collecting agent for AT&T and any' other companies that choose to use Mountain Bell's billing services," Wallace said. More detailed information on the modified bill will be released prior to the effective date, Wallace explained. ex-plained. Wallace added that the company is preparing a special booklet explaining ex-plaining these and other changes taking effect Jan. 1. The 16-page manual will be mailed to the company's more than 3Vi million residence and small business customers in December. The separation of Mountain Bell from AT&T won't officially take place for several weeks. But the first major changes brought on by the historical split are already being felt in Utah. Next week, Mountain Bell will notify its 85,966 business customers in the state that the numbers they call about telephone equipment and certain services will change October Oc-tober 17. According to Earl M. Wallace, District Manager-Business Service Center, the announcement is the first in a series of coordinated steps the company is taking to help ease customers into the new environment en-vironment brought on by the divestiture of the Bell System. "This way, customers will not have to cope with a large number of changes all at once," Wallace said. "It will be smoother for customers and ourselves." The company has formed new departments as they will exist in 1984, even though the final split with AT&T won't take effect until Jan. 1, he explained. "The division of responsibilities requires the reassignment of many employees to newly created organizations. Therefore, some of the telephone numbers used to contact these separate organizations must also change." Wallace said that after diver-titure, diver-titure, Mountain Bell will not longer provide or repair telephone equipment, but it will continue to provide local basic exchange service ser-vice and access to the network. Also, the divestiture will mean that Mountain Bell will handle only those long distance calls within Utah. Other firms, including AT&T, will handle out-of-state calls. Charts outlining the new numbers are being mailed with a letter of explanation to all business accounts, ac-counts, Wallace said. Wallace explained that this change involves only business customers. The 445,523 residential customers will be notified of a similar change in contact numbers |