Pacific Telecom Inc retains its triple-B-plus senior unsecured debt and A-2 commercial paper ratings with Standard & Poor’s Corp following its announcement that it will sell its Alaskan long-distance telephone subsidiary, Alascom Inc, to AT&T Corp for about $365m. The sale of Alascom is a positive development for Pacific Telecom because in the long term the effects of a 1994 Federal Communications Commission order, which restructured the long distance telephone market in the frozen wastes and terminated a subsidy from AT&T at January 1 1996, were expected to hurt Alascom’s revenue stream.
