Posted: 01/2000
News Briefs
The FCC last month was expected to approve Bell Atlantic Corp.'s (www.bellatlantic.com) bid to provide in-region long distance service in New York. Chairman and CEO Ivan Seidenberg threatened to sue the federal agency if it did otherwise. Meanwhile, the chief of SBC Communications Inc. (www.sbc.com), which is pushing for long distance entry in Texas, has been publicly applauding the ILEC's Section 271 and acquisitions plans.
Speaking of mergers, Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John McCain (R-Ariz.) intends to ask the General Accounting Office to conduct a study examining the impact of telecom mergers "from a consumer's standpoint." McCain, a presidential contender, says he's concerned about further telecom industry consolidation and he plans to increase his committee's oversight of the issue by holding more telecom merger hearings this year.
Prism Communication Services Inc. (www.prismcommunications.com) has secured CLEC certifications in Maryland, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Washington, D.C. Prism--which has interconnection agreements with Bell Atlantic in Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Washington, D.C., and with BellSouth Corp. (www.bellsouth.com) in North Carolina--also plans to target three markets in Canada. Meanwhile, Fidelity Holdings Inc.'s (www.fdhg.com) technology subsidiary, Computer Business Sciences Inc., nabbed five CLEC certifications in Connecticut, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky and Nebraska. CBS now is a facilities-based provider in 24 states, encompassing 53 of the largest U.S. metropolitan areas. Expansion plans also are under way for another seven states and CBS plans soon to roll out its DSL-based services via its interconnection/collocation arrangement with Bell Atlantic in the New York metro area.
Several CLEC executives, including Allegiance Telecom Inc. Chairman and CEO Royce Holland (www.allegiancetelecom.com), Birch Telecom Inc. Vice President Rick Tidwell (www.birchtelecom.com), and TriVergent Communications Inc. Chairman and CEO Charles Houser (www.trivergent.com), along with United States Telephone Association (USTA) President Roy M. Neel (www.usta.org), gave the Senate Commerce Committee an earful on the status of local voice and data competition. Neel said a USTA poll shows CLECs now serve some 3.5 million access lines nationwide, proving that local competition is alive and flourishing. The CLEC executives, however, said the ILECs continue to resist, deny and delay local competition. Houser, for instance, said BellSouth's difficulties include inadequate and incomplete customer support systems; disconnections and interruptions in service; and provisioning difficulties and delays. "The antics of the ILECs and RBOCs severely constrain the CLECs' ability to bring consumers the products, services, better prices and choices that are being promised them," he added.
The Arizona Corporation Commission (www.cc.state.az.us) has ordered US WEST Inc. (www.uswest.com) to pay past-due reciprocal compensation to CLEC Electric Lightwave Inc. (www.eli.net) for terminating calls to ISPs that originated on the ILEC's network, per their interconnection pact. ELI has a similar complaint against US WEST filed in Idaho. Similarly, the Alabama Public Utilities Commission (www.psc.state.al.us) has approved an arbitrated two-year interconnection agreement between ICG Communications Inc. (www.icgcomm.com) and BellSouth in which the ILEC must pay ICG reciprocal compensation for terminating the same Internet traffic.
