BellSouth Files Application to Provide Long Distance in Five States

BellSouth Corp. filed a five-state application Thursday with the Federal Communications Commission to offer long-distance service in Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina and South Carolina.

The Atlanta-based company said all five state commissions have supported the regional Bell’s request to provide long-distance service. The FCC has 90 days to issue rulings. BellSouth began offering long-distance service last month in Georgia and Louisiana.

Under the 1996 Telecommunications Act all four Bell companies –- BellSouth, SBC Communications Inc., Qwest Communications International Inc. and Verizon Communications International Inc. -- must prove to regulators their local networks are open to competition before receiving approval within their local regions to provide long-distance service. They do this by showing compliance to a 14-point checklist articulated in Section 271 of the Telcom Act.

Since the FCC granted approval in December 1999 to Verizon in New York, the Bell companies have filed a slew of applications with the FCC to provide long-distance service, and during the past year, the commission’s actions have been considered little more than “rubber stamp” approvals.

An example in point is the FCC’s approval Wednesday of Verizon’s application to begin providing long-distance service in Maine. Verizon now has been granted approval to offer interLATA service in seven states.

Last week, Qwest announced it had filed an application with the FCC to provide long-distance service in five states within its 14-state local region -- Colorado, Idaho, Iowa, Nebraska and North Dakota. The Denver-based company says it plans to file similar applications in the nine other Western states provide long-distance service in all 14 states by the end of the year.

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