AT&T to raise prices

As of January 1st if you are get your local phone services from AT&T you could see a rise in the price of your phone bill.  The telecommunications company has begun notifying customers that it plans to raise monthly rates for its basic land line phone services between 10 and 25 percent.  These rate increases will not affect people who just have wireless plans with the company.  

These rate increases will affect about half of the 6.5 million residential phone lines that AT&T provides in the state, including those of its lowest-income customers.  This has a lot of consumer advocates upset, with the prices being raised at the most vulnerable time for the customers and the economy.  People think that the timing is wrong for a rate hike and that it seems unnecessary to attack customers that really can't afford it.  

AT&T  has only raised prices once in the past 14 years, which happened this past year.  Even after this raise in prices they are still going to be one the lowest phone services in the nation.  

I don't really think this is going to affect students our age because the majority of us only have cell phones and don't have a land line anymore.  I am not worried about this because I do only have a cell phone but I can see how this could be a problem for a number of people.  

-Carly Youngren