SBC Communications Inc’s Pacific Bell unit has reached an agreement with fellow regional Bell operating company Ameritech Corp’s Ameritech Communications International Inc unit to allow the Chicago-based phone company to compete against it in California to offer local phone services.
Ameritech, will face Pacific Bell’s major competitor GTE Corp as well as the other 33 competitors that have signed interconnection agreements with Pacific Bell. The California Bell has signed only one other interconnection agreement with another regional Bell company. In July, Pacific Bell signed a similar agreement with an operating unit of US West Communications Group. The arrangement sets the terms for direct interconnection, provision of unbundled network elements and resale of network services by Ameritech with Pacific Bell’s phone network in California, it said. In accordance with the Telecom Act, Pacific Bell submitted the agreement for approval to the California Public Utilities Commission on Thursday. SBC earlier this week bought long-distance and wireless operator Southern New England Telecommunications for $4.4bn taking the company into the long-distance market. The company, which has seen all its applications to offer long distance service from its home region turned down by the FCC, says it has spent an estimated $1bn to open its Pacific Bell, Nevada Bell and Southwestern Bell networks to competition. It is one of the three regional Bell companies that succeeded in having restrictions placed on them by the 1996 Telecommunications Act dismissed as unconstitutional. The ruling is now the subject of dispute by long-distance companies, the FCC and the DOJ.
