COLUMBUS — The chairman of the Public Utility Commission of Ohio (PUCO) says it may be impossible for all the state's electric utilities to get 20 percent of their customers to switch to new suppliers, as envisioned by the nearly year-old electric choice law.

        The law, which took effect Jan. 1, was designed to spur competition among electric utilities and presumably keep rates low. Part of the law set a target for each Ohio utility to have 20 percent of customers find a new supplier by the end of 2003.

        Yet fewer than 12 percent of the state's 4.8 million residential, commercial and industrial ratepayers have switched to alternative suppliers through Dec. 1, according to information compiled by the PUCO. Less than 1 percent of Cincinnati Gas & Electric Co.'s roughly 575,000 residential customers have switched.

        The culprit, says PUCO Chairman Alan Schriber, is relatively low electric rates in parts of Ohio, which provide little incentive for new competitors. CG&E is offering residential customers a switching credit that's greater than its cost of electric generation. But not many people are taking the offer.

        “There's only so much you can do. If (customers)

        don't switch, they don't switch,” Mr. Schriber, a former Miami University economist who lives in Wyoming, said Monday during his annual review of the commission's activity for the media.

        The 20 percent figure in the electric choice law is a goal and not a requirement, Mr. Schriber said. T

        Most of the customer switching has occurred in northern Ohio, where First Energy Corp. offered 1,200 megawatts of power at wholesale rates to competitors.

        But Mr. Schriber said provisions in Ohio's law that allow customers to band together to purchase power — a feature known as aggregation — could spur more customer switching. Voters in many areas of northern Ohio have approved such arrangements, but only the Warren County city of Franklin has done so in the Cincin nati region.

        Turning to telecommunications, Mr. Schriber said the commission cleared the biggest single hurdle to increased residential phone competition in October when it set new lower wholesale prices for various features in the service area of Ameritech, the state's largest local service provider.

        The Ameritech wholesale rates, which are expected to serve as a model for other carriers such as Cincinnati Bell, “are the second lowest in the nation,” Mr. Schriber said. “There's no reason not to have (local telephone) competition in Ohio,” he said. “The door is open.”

        He said the competition will likely come from existing providers — such as Cincinnati Bell, which has already begun expanding into Dayton, and from other national providers that will offer service in niches such as high-speed Internet access.

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