(The letter and table referred to follow :) Mr. JOSEPH C. DUKE, Sergeant at Arms, U.S. Senate, THE CHESAPEAKE & POTOMAC TELEPHONE CO., DEAR MR. DUKE: In accordance with your request of June 8, we have attached the following wide area telephone service (WATS) plans for the U.S. Senate with their respective costs. This service would be available 24 hours a day 7 days a week; however, plans 1, 2, or 3 will enable users to place 1,000, 2,000, or 750 long-distance calls during a normal working day to 48 of the 50 States. Calls to Alaska, Hawaii, Canada, Mexico and all overseas points will have to be placed with C. &. P. operators over regular central office lines as is the present method. We would like to meet with you at your earliest convenience to discuss these plans. If you have any questions, please call me on 392-8616. Cordially, RICHARD L. LESTER, Jr., Accounts Manager. Senator SALTONSTALL. I don't want to say anything more but I did not want to deceive the chairman. SERVICE LIMITATION Senator MONRONEY. You told us about it last year when you stated how satisfactory it was. But you could call only Boston as I understand. Senator SALTONSTALL. We can call Boston but through Boston if we can get the line we can get the service. I think it proves very satisfactory. Mr. CHEATHAM. Mr. Chairman, it is not limited to Boston. He could use it anywhere GSA goes. Senator PROXMIRE. It is of no value to you but it is less expensive to the Government. Senator SALTONSTALL. It saves the Government and also, as I understand it, it allows us more calls for the amount of money allowed because it is cheaper. Mr. CHEATHAM. On the $1,800 allowance it helps the Senator but not on the calls in minutes allowance. While we are on that maybe the committee would like me to explain the system from your local State offices before I go back to the C. & P. Telephone Co.'s WATS proposal. Senator SALTONSTALL. I did not want to interfere in any way but I did not want to deceive anybody. Senator MONRONEY. We all know that the telephone system is leaving many members in the red. We would like to see how we can reduce the cost to the Government as well as the cost to ourselves. Senator SALTONSTALL. I am through, Mr. Chairman. I have confessed. Senator MONRONEY. You told us all that last year. Mr. CHEATHAM. Mr. Duke's purpose was to give you all the information available to him. Senator YOUNG. That is a terrible confession from the Senator from Massachusetts, saving some money. TELEPHONE SERVICE FOR STATE OFFICES Mr. CHEATHAM. As to Senators' State offices, if the State office is located either in a Federal building or in a building to which a federally operated switchboard goes into, you have available unlimited GSA-FTS service for a fee as follows: PER-INSTRUMENT CHARGE in your You pay GSA $12 per month for each instrument that you have office. That does not mean each line but each instrument. If you have one line on the GSA board in your local office and you have five instruments on as many desks Senator YOUNG. Do you mean outlets? Mr. CHEATHAM. Ordinary extensions. Then you pay 5 times 12 even though you only have the 1 line per month. During ordinary business hours that the GSA switchboard is in operation in your local home State Federal building you may call all over the United States as many times a day and as many times CONVERSION OF PRESENT TELELPHONE SWITCHBOARD Mr. CHEATHAM. The telephone company states that for a small installation charge they can change the Capitol telephone switchboard, which is a joint switchboard, so that only certain Senate telephones may reach the WATS system. Until the House desires to employ the WATS system, no telephone on the House could reach these WATS lines by dial. In other words, this is a comparative example: Today you dial “8” to make the regular commercial telephone call against your allowance of minutes and numbers of calls or against your $1,800 allowance. Of course you can place it through the operator manually as well as dialing "8." For WATS the telephone company would have you dial "89" to go directly into the telephone company's WATS system. All telephones on the Senate side, except those in each Senator's office, committees, and maybe in the cloakroom and a few other special places would be fixed so that they could not reach the WATS system. Elevator and police desk telephones and many others could not get into the WATS system. USE OF WIDE AREA TELEPHONE SERVICE BY INDIVIDUAL SENATORS Senator SALTONSTALL. Mr. Chairman, I don't want to deceive you or any member of this committee. Now I use this service and we have been using it for over a year. Mr. CHEATHAM. Yes, sir. May I explain that, sir? Senator SALTONSTALL. I have said my say. I don't want to go any further about it. It was arranged by the GSA for us. Mr. CHEATHAM. Yes, sir. Senator SALTONSTALL. We do it by calling Boston and getting it tied in up there. It save a lot of money. Senator MONRONEY. This is all charged against your 160 calls, though? Senator SALTONSTALL. It is charged against our calls, but it is cheaper. We get more calls. Mr. CHEATHAM. There are 15 Senators who have requested this arrangement. Some of them use it but little. A few of them use it each month and some maybe every month or two. SAVINGS UNDER WIDE AREA TELEPHONE SERVICE Senator SALTONSTALL. We use it whenever we get the line. Now, when we can't get the line we have to do it the more expensive way. Mr. CHEATHAM. The regular commercial way? Senator SALTONSTALL. When we do get the line it saves us. We get more calls for our money. Mr. CHEATHAM. Against your number of calls which are 160 a month, in the aggregate of 800 minutes, it does not save you anything. But against your $1,800 allowance per annum of which you may use $1,200 in the first 6 months, it does save you something. Of course it saves the Government regardless of which of your allowances it may be charged against. Senator SALTONSTALL. I don't want to say anything more but I did not want to deceive the chairman. SERVICE LIMITATION Senator MONRONEY. You told us about it last year when you stated how satisfactory it was. But you could call only Boston as I understand. Senator SALTONSTALL. We can call Boston but through Boston if we can get the line we can get the service. I think it proves very satisfactory. Mr. CHEATHAM. Mr. Chairman, it is not limited to Boston. He could use it anywhere GSA goes. Senator PROXMIRE. It is of no value to you but it is less expensive to the Government. Senator SALTONSTALL. It saves the Government and also, as I understand it, it allows us more calls for the amount of money allowed because it is cheaper. Mr. CHEATHAM. On the $1,800 allowance it helps the Senator but not on the calls in minutes allowance. While we are on that maybe the committee would like me to explain the system from your local State offices before I go back to the C. & P. Telephone Co.'s WATS proposal. Senator SALTONSTALL. I did not want to interfere in any way but I did not want to deceive anybody. Senator MONRONEY. We all know that the telephone system is leaving many members in the red. We would like to see how we can reduce the cost to the Government as well as the cost to ourselves. Senator SALTONSTALL. I am through, Mr. Chairman. I have confessed. Senator MONRONEY. You told us all that last year. Mr. CHEATHAM. Mr. Duke's purpose was to give you all the information available to him. Senator YOUNG. That is a terrible confession from the Senator from Massachusetts, saving some money. TELEPHONE SERVICE FOR STATE OFFICES Mr. CHEATHAM. As to Senators' State offices, if the State office is located either in a Federal building or in a building to which a federally operated switchboard goes into, you have available unlimited GSA-FTS service for a fee as follows: PER-INSTRUMENT CHARGE You pay GSA $12 per month for each instrument that you have in your office. That does not mean each line but each instrument. If you have one line on the GSA board in your local office and you have five instruments on as many desks Senator YOUNG. Do you mean outlets? Mr. CHEATHAM. Ordinary extensions. Then you pay 5 times 12 even though you only have the 1 line per month. During ordinary business hours that the GSA switchboard is in operation in your local home State Federal building you may call all over the United States as many times a day and as many times a week or month as you wish to with no more charge for long-distance service. Of course you can pay that out of the expenses that you are allowed for your office if you have any left over or you can pay it out of your private pocket. Senator YOUNG. Can these calls be listened to by anyone else? Mr. CHEATHAM. No, sir; they cannot be monitored by GSA operators. If they have to help you get the call, as soon as your call is completed, as GSA explained it to us orally, their operator is automatically cut out and they can't listen if they want to. Senator SALTONSTALL. But the GSA has only so many lines, we will say, to the Federal building in Boston. If those lines are being used by somebody else, you can't use this service until that line is free; is that not right? Mr. CHEATHAM. That is right, sir. In other words, in your Boston office you are in a Federal building, Senator? Senator SALTONSTALL. Yes. Mr. CHEATHAM. Then you may be competing with the Veterans' Administration there, the courts, the post office, the Internal Revenue, and many others housed in the same building. You and they keep dialing until you don't get a busy signal and then you can go anywhere in the United States for the charge of $12 per month per instrument. UNLIMITED DESTINATION CALLS Senator PROXMIRE. You mean to any Federal building in the United States? Mr. CHEATHAM. More than that. You can go almost anywhere in the continent covered by FTS. In other words, Senator Proxmire, if you are in a Federal building in Wisconsin and pay the GSA the $12 per month charge you might call any of your constituents anywhere in Wisconsin within the FTS range or you might decide you want to call Senator Hayden out in Phoenix at his hotel and it would all be included in that $12 per instrument per month. However, as Senator Saltonstall says, if you have a lot of competition going out of your Federal building switchboard in your home State you might have to keep dialing a while until you get a vacant line. USE OF NIGHT LINES Now if you can arrange, and it can be done in some of the Federal buildings, for you to have a night line on their switchboard you may call Washington any time of the night on that office switchboard and you won't have much competition because these other Federal agencies housed in the same office building you are in are normally not at work at night whereas Senators frequently are. That is a possibility for this committee to consider and review. Senator SALTONSTALL. What is your recommendations? We have been through this several years, Mr. Cheatham. What is your recommendation, that this committee should do? Mr. CHEATHAM. I haven't explained the WATS system, Senator. Senator MONRONEY. I thought that was what you were explaining. |