THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, July 1, 1994 TAG: 9407010410
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: By DAVID MAYFIELD, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Short : 35 lines
MCI Communications Corp. on Thursday asked Virginia's State Corporation Commission to immediately join all but two other states and allow competition for long-distance calling within regions like Hampton Roads.
MCI, the nation's second-largest long-distance phone company, has been trying for a decade to get the commission to re-consider its position on the matter.
Starting Friday, Oklahoma and New Jersey authorized such ``intra-LATA'' toll competition, leaving only Virginia, Arizona and California as states that bar it.
LATA stands for Local Access and Transport Area. There are seven LATAs in the state, with a metropolitan area like Hampton Roads at the center of each.
The Virginia commission has indicated it could be unfair to allow MCI and other companies to compete against entrenched monopolies like Bell Atlantic Corp. and GTE Corp. on long-distance calling within a LATA - for instance, from Virginia Beach to Williamsburg.
That's because the latter two companies aren't allowed, under a federal court decree, to compete with long-distance outfits like MCI for toll calls that originate in one LATA and end up in another - such as from Norfolk to Richmond.
Eventually, however, federal legislation is likely to do away with that prohibition - and authorize all kinds of new phone competition, for both local and long-distance services. by CNB