Story County residents will be able to choose from more telephone-service providers beginning Saturday.

“Previously, the market was closed to competition, and residents could only make long-distance calls using the same phone company as their local phone company,” said Sarah Duisik, AT&T spokeswoman. “When the Telecommunications Act of 1996 passed, it opened up the market for other companies to provide service.”

Although Story County currently has several companies that provide long-distance service, US West is the only company where customers only have to dial “1” plus the area code and phone number, Duisik said.

Companies operating within US West to provide long-distance service require the customer to dial several other digits to complete the call, such as “10-10-321,” she said.

Now Story County customers can choose from a variety of services, including those from smaller companies.

“I think it’s great for Iowa,” said Bill McGowan, director of marketing and long distance at Iowa Network Services. “This helped us choose to enter the long-distance market.”

Duisik said this market already had been expanded in some states, and the new policy should be a good change for Story County residents.

“One thing I’ve noticed is that with an increase in competition, the prices have gone down, and the quality of service has gotten better,” she said. “There are definitely more consumer benefits.”

McGowan said more companies should mean big benefits for Iowa State students.

“We were serving rural communities more, but this new change has helped us expand and hit the cities and college students,” he said.

Phone company officials said the expansion has increased their business in other states, and they hope to see an increase in Iowa as well.

“The more publicity this change gets, the more business we get and the more service people get,” said Jim Evans, vice president of marketing at Telecom Affiliates. “When this happened in Colorado, we gained more than 500 customers in two weeks.”

Last week, Story County residents received a letter informing them of the changes being made.