Assessing our stake in Information Age

Just as economists use a practical "food basket" approach to measure local "cost-of-living" increases (or decreases), Information Age gurus are now suggesting a "family audit" approach to see where and for what purposes information and communications dollars go. I did this for my family this past weekend, with interesting and surprising results.

Like 93% of Americans, we have a local "wireline" telephone service. We use it to call friends, neighbors, taxis, pizza delivery and all the other things people do in day-to-day living. We have a second line which we use for a fax and to link up to the Internet and bypass the kids' use of the "family" line. Our local telephone services are provided by Bell Atlantic and each line costs $20 a month, or $480 a year for two lines.

With lots of relatives spread around the country, we also use long distance services provided by AT&T. Cost: about $75 a month or $900 a year. In fact, more than two of every three dollars we send to Bell Atlantic goes to AT&T.

We also subscribe to an information utility, America Online. My kids use AOL for games, chat rooms and school reports; my wife uses AOL as a gateway to the Internet for e-mail. Cost last month: about $35 a month, or $420 a year.

Cable TV is another wireline service. We subscribe to a basic service (which doesn't include a lot of the movies and other special channels). Our provider is TCI and the monthly cost is $28.38, or about $340 a year.

Our "wireless" profile is a little different. Except for the annual contribution we make to PBS and NPR, radio is "free" to us. Television service is a wireline service, piped into our household by our CATV provider. We have a mobile (cellular) phone. The access charge is $24.95 a month or about $300 a year and monthly airtime charges run around $50, for another $600 a year. Result: We pay Cellular One (now owned by AT&T) about $900 per year.

Overall result: We pay about $3,040 a year for electronic information services, which do not include the substantial costs of movies, film rentals, books, periodicals and newspapers. Of this total, 70% ( or $2,140) goes for wired services -- though the percentage going to wireless will probably increase in the future as wireless services proliferate.

My home audit led to several surprises. First, we spend a lot more money on information and communications than I realized. In fact, we canceled one on-line service in the process of doing this audit.

Second, we purchase our electronic information services from many different providers - in our case, five: AT&T (30%), Cellular One (29%), Bell Atlantic (16%), America On-Line (14%), TCI Cable (11%).

Third, the incumbent telephone "monopoly" receives about 16