THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, July 19, 1996 TAG: 9607190444
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DAVE MAYFIELD
STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 75 lines
Cox Communications Inc. has joined a list of would-be providers of local telephone services that have asked the State Corporation Commission to help settle the terms of breaking up Bell Atlantic Corp.'s monopoly.
Cox, which earlier this week won commission approval to use its Hampton Roads cable-TV system to carry phone calls, asked the agency to arbitrate its disputes with Bell Atlantic over a number of issues.
Cox joins three other would-be local phone-service providers in Virginia, including AT&T Corp., that have asked the commission to help settle differences with Bell Atlantic. AT&T announced its arbitration request earlier this week.
Kathleen Cummings, a senior telecommunications specialist for the Virginia commission, said she expects some aspiring local phone companies to soon file requests to arbitrate differences with GTE Corp. as well. GTE is the second-largest local phone provider in the state, after Bell Atlantic.
Under telecommunications-reform legislation signed into law early this year by President Clinton, public service commissions have until December to settle disputes related to the opening of local exchanges to competition.
Cummings said Virginia's commission will be hard-pressed to meet that requirement.
``These are tremendously important issues to all of these companies,'' she said. ``And they are very far apart. We're not talking about tweaking here and there.''
The number of potential disputes is daunting, Cummings said. Already, 13 companies have applied since late last year to challenge Bell Atlantic and GTE in providing local phone services in Virginia. Only one of the 13 so far has reached a full settlement with either of the companies.
Cummings said the commission will take whatever steps it must to comply with federal guidelines.
In the case of Cox and Bell Atlantic, the differences are many. Cox said in a filing with the commission that the two companies haven't been able to agree on the cost that each company would charge the other for exchanging phone calls between their networks.
Among other things, Cox said, Bell Atlantic has also been reluctant to make technology available at a reasonable cost that would allow a consumer to switch service to Cox Telephone without having to get a new phone number.
Eric Rabe, a Bell Atlantic spokesman, said the company believes it has taken reasonable positions on all matters. He pointed out that Bell Atlantic has resolved all but one item with one of the companies that filed for arbitration, MFS Communications Co.
Such disputes are important in the nationwide telecommunications free-for-all. That's because under the federal law, Baby Bells like Bell Atlantic will have to satisfy regulators that they've truly opened their local-service monopolies to competitors before they can offer their customers potentially profitable long-distance services.
Earlier this week, The Wall Street Journal reported that Bell Atlantic may have found a way to sidestep the requirement. The report named Bell Atlantic as one of several Baby Bells that plan to use their long-distance subsidiaries to offer local phone services as well - in this case by ``reselling'' network capacity purchased at bargain wholesale prices from a sister unit.
Rabe said the Journal story was wrong.
Although Bell Atlantic is allowed under federal law to use a subsidiary to resell its own local phone services, he said the terms and conditions of the arrangement can't be sweeter than those provided to competitors. In any case, he contended, Bell Atlantic hasn't yet decided whether it will resell local services. ILLUSTRATION: THE DISPUTE
COX
BELL ATLANTIC
Cox, which plans to offer its cable customers local phone service,
says Bell Atlantic has been reluctant to make technology available
that would allow consumers to switch their phone service without
changing phone numbers. The companies also can't agree on the cost
of the trasferring calls between their networks.
KEYWORDS: TELEPHONE by CNB