According to surveys conducted for the New York State PublicService Commission as part of its customer education and outreachprogram, 64% of residential customers and 62% of business customershave a general awareness of the move to competition in the electricindustry, and most customers are optimistic about the changestaking place. However only 23% of residential customers and 34% ofsmall businesses are aware of competition in the natural gasindustry.

In July, the commission launched a multi-media public educationcampaign across the state to provide residents access toinformation on the introduction of competition in both the electricand gas industries. The survey was designed in part to gauge thesuccess of that campaign. Commission Chair Maureen O. Helmer saidthe news on the electric side was encouraging but clearly there’s alot left to be done on the gas side. A PSC spokesman noted part ofthe reason for the poor results on the gas side may be because thesurvey was statewide but not all of the state’s residents are gasconsumers. Nevertheless, he admitted the commission was concernedabout poor gas customer awareness of competition.

According to a Yankee Energy Systems 1998 deregulation survey,38% of consumers nationwide expressed basic awareness and 50.8% ofconsumers in the Northeast are generally aware of changes takingplace in the electric industry.

Other results highlighted in the New York PSC report include thefollowing: 75% of residential and 69% of business consumers believethey would benefit from competition, 32% of residential customersexpressed concern about the impact of competition on reliability,25% expressed concern about the impact on rates, 70% of residentialcustomers and 83% of small businesses believe they do not haveenough information to choose their future electric supplier, and75% of all respondents cite rates and reliability as the mostimportant factors in choosing an alternate supplier.

The residential consumer survey included results from 1,000telephone interviews with randomly selected customers across NewYork State from April 20 through June 6, 1998.For smallbusinesses, 4,000 surveys were mailed to companies that met thecriteria of less than $10 million in revenue and fewer than 100employees. Questionnaires were mailed in June 1998 and 460responses were received through August.

A copy of the survey summary report presented to the commissionwill be available on the PSC’s website, https://www.dps.state.ny.us/The complete results may be obtained from the commission’s filesoffice (518)-474-2500.

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