ALTS Opposes Southwestern Bell's Application to Offer Long Distance in Texas.Business Editors WASHINGTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 1, 2000 The Association for Local Telecommunications Services (ALTS ALTS Association for Local Telecommunications Services ALTS Aarhus Lawn Tennis Selskab (Denmark) ALTS Annotated Labeled Transition System ALTS Analogue Line Terminating Subsystem ALTS Automatic Laser Tracking System ) today said it opposes Southwestern Bell
Southwestern Bell Telephone, L.P. Telephones' (SWBT's) application to enter the long distance market in Texas. SWBT SWBT Southwestern Bell Telephone SWBT Solderability Wetting Balance Tester has not opened its local markets to competition and the Federal Communications Commission Federal Communications Commission (FCC), independent executive agency of the U.S. government established in 1934 to regulate interstate and foreign communications in the public interest. (FCC (1) (Federal Communications Commission, Washington, DC, www.fcc.gov) The U.S. government agency that regulates interstate and international communications including wire, cable, radio, TV and satellite. The FCC was created under the U.S. ) will be doing a disservice to consumers by granting SWBT permission to offer long distance. &uot;There are still serious concerns that compel us to oppose SWBT's application,&uot; said John D. Windhausen, Jr., President of ALTS, the leading national trade association representing facilities-based competitive local exchange carriers. &uot;The company has not sufficiently opened its market to local competitors.&uot; &uot;Evidence indicates that SWBT has failed to comply with many of the items on the FCC's checklist,&uot; said Kim Kirby, ALTS' Vice President of State Affairs. &uot;SWBT performed poorly in the Texas OSS Oss (ôs), city (1994 pop. 62,141), North Brabant prov., S Netherlands; chartered 1399. It is a significant industrial center. Manufactures include meat products, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, electrical equipment, and metalware. (operations support system) testing. It has also failed to provide unbundled network elements (UNEs) in a timely way, particularly its obligation to deliver nondiscriminatory access to loops capable of supporting advanced services. It has been noted that there are service outages, blocked calls, and a troubling prevalence of manual handling of service orders.&uot; &uot;SWBT has failed to perform on these critical issues and is relying upon promises of future compliance and has not implemented solutions to existing provisioning problems,&uot; said Jonathan Askin, ALTS' General Counsel. &uot;It has not met the 14-point competition checklist in Section 271 of the Federal Telecommunications Act. Until it appropriately addresses these serious concerns and there is an opportunity to test these 'fixes,' it would be a mistake for the FCC to approve SWBT's 271 application.&uot; ALTS is the leading national industry association whose mission is to promote facilities-based local telecommunications competition. Created in 1987, ALTS has offices in Washington, D.C. and Irvine, California and now represents almost 200 companies that build, own, and operate competitive local networks. For more information on ALTS, contact Crawford Public Relations public relations, activities and policies used to create public interest in a person, idea, product, institution, or business establishment. By its nature, public relations is devoted to serving particular interests by presenting them to the public in the most at 703/318-5461 or visit the ALTS Web site at www.alts.org. |
|
||||||||||||||
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion