Long-distance phone calls to be paid for in new way

Residential telephone customers will be charged an extra $2 a month beginning in 1984 for the right to gain access to long-distance telephone lines, the Federal Communications Commission decided. Business customers will be charged $4 monthly for the same service.

At present, customers actually making long-distance calls are charged for access to these lines in the form of a markup on the cost of each long-distance call. After three years of study on how to allocate costs now that companies such as MCI and Southern Pacific have entered the long-distance market in competition with AT&T, the commission approved the complex formula on a 7-0 vote.