While the seven Baby Bells and GTE Corp dominate the US local telephone service market, there is a second tier of sizable regional companies such as Southern New England Telecommunications Inc, Cincinnati Bell Inc, Pacific Telecom Inc and Rochester Telephone Corp, and under these there are hundreds of tiny phone companies with between 500 and 25,000 lines – the sparsely-populated state of Iowa, notes the Wall Street Journal, alone has 144 local phone companies: regular readers will have spotted that Rochester Telephone, stuck in a town that has seen better days in the far north of upstate New York – home to Eastman Kodak Co and with a big Xerox Corp base – has been assiduously buying up the pick of these small companies, and, the Journal reports, it has no plans to stop now; there are 1,400 independents left, and it has identified 400 big enough to be worth buying; it currently has 688,000 lines, up from 467,000 in 1985, against 781,000 at Cincinnati Bell, and hopes to be able to pick up 40,000 to 50,000 more a year.
