Bell?s A Ringing

After only 28 business days of offering long-distance service in Texas, SBC Communications Inc. had captured more than 500,000 customers that represent about 700,000 phone lines.

This is noteworthy because Southwestern Bell Telephone Co. of Little Rock, an SBC subsidiary, applied on July 24 to be able to sell long distance services in Arkansas. As part of the 1984 trust-buster breakup of “Ma Bell,” SBC and its subsidiaries have not been able to sell long-distance across Local Access Transport Area districts.

But Congress passed a measure in 1996 that has allowed Bell companies to get back into the inter-LATA long-distance business.

The success in Texas has Little Rock’s Bell brethren fired up. It doesn’t take a communications engineer to figure out they’ll be major competition in this market once Southwestern Bell is cleared to reach out and touch long-distance customers.

SBC considers Arkansas it’s second most competitive market, behind the Houston area, since there are more than 70 competing phone companies here. We’re also hearing that there’s about to be some more local service providers.

Since Bell’s getting into long distance, several of their competitors are working on plans to provide local access services.