WASHINGTON — MCI Communications Corp. filed a request this week to undercut a 15-cents-a-minute long-distance rate unveiled Tuesday by rival AT&T Corp., but at the same time the No. 2 long-distance carrier announced higher fees on calling card services.
Analysts said the moves are in keeping with recent efforts by major long-distance carriers to boost fees on ancillary services even as they promote a variety of discount calling plans. And a major price war is nowhere in sight.
"Margins are already thin, and now would be a particularly inappropriate time for a price war with the [imminent] entry of the regional Bell telephone companies into the long-distance business," said Boyd Peterson, a telecommunications analyst at the Yankee Group in Cambridge, Mass.
While smaller carriers have been using aggressive pricing to gain market share, the big three long-distance firms have quietly been boosting fees on a variety of key services. For instance, rates on long-distance directory assistance have skyrocketed to 95 cents on MCI, AT&T and Sprint, compared with the 64 cents charged by LDDS Worldcomm, the nation's fourth-largest long-distance carrier, according to Telecommunications Research and Action Center, a Washington-based consumer group.
