THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, January 29, 1997 TAG: 9701290635
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DAVE MAYFIELD, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 33 lines
AT&T Corp. is taking its first steps back into the local telephone market with a service aimed at business customers in 35 states, including Virginia.
The nation's largest long-distance phone company said it has begun a service called Digital Link that lets medium and large businesses use their existing connections to AT&T to make local calls.
AT&T, which was barred from local phone service as part of its 1984 breakup, is branching back into that part of the business under terms of last year's federal telecommunications-reform law.
The company plans to offer local service to residential customers as well - as early as this summer in Virginia.
The service announced this week for business customers is available immediately and will be expanded to 45 states next month.
Under the service, business customers with so-called dedicated lines to AT&T will initially only be able to use AT&T for outgoing local calls. And AT&T said there will be exceptions even in that case. AT&T can't immediately handle outgoing calls to 800 or 900 numbers, 911 or 411.
AT&T said that by mid-summer it plans to begin expanding the service to include calls to those numbers and to allow incoming local calls.
The company didn't disclose rates for the service, but said it will charge for outbound local calls in six-second increments. Most local phone companies bill their business customers for outgoing calls in one-minute increments.
KEYWORDS: AT&T