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To: Rob Riordan who wrote (12555)	8/5/1999 12:49:00 PM
From: pat mudge	Respond to of 18016

Good news for RBOCs: August 04, 1999 19:11 FCC to set measure for ending price limits on Bells WASHINGTON, Aug 4 (Reuters) - The Federal Communications Commission is expected on Thursday to move towards giving the regional Bell companies greater freedom to offer special deals to their biggest customers. The Bells have increasingly complained of growing competition for high-end services and four of the companies over the last year asked the FCC to lift the agency's price controls and allow them to craft one-of-a-kind package deals. While companies like AT&T Corp.'s Teleport are free to offer any combination of services at any price to a large customer, the Bells are largely limited to offering term and volume-based discounts and must make any special deal available to other similar customers. On Thursday, the FCC is scheduled to vote on a set of standards that measure competition for high-end services like a high-capacity telephone line connecting two offices of a corporation or a line connecting a business directly to a long distance provider. The plan is expected to set out various thresholds for competition, based on statistics like how many competitors have located their own equipment in a Bell company switching office. As more competition develops, the Bells would be allowed greater pricing flexibility until finally all price controls could be removed. US West filed the first request, nearly a year ago, for deregulation of its high-capacity services in Phoenix, Arizona. The Denver-based company filed a subsequent request for Seattle, followed by similar requests from San Antonio-based SBC Communications Inc. , New York-based Bell Atlantic Corp. and Chicago-based Ameritech Corp. The companies argued that competitors offering better deals were grabbing a customer's high-capacity business and much of the rest of the customer's telecom business migrated as well. "These transport services are almost like the dial tone for a large customer," one US West official explained. "Once you've lost them there, you've more than likely lost them for their switched services." By law, the FCC is to act on the petitions within a year, but the agency is permitted to extend the deadline by 90 days. The agency is expected to adopt such a delay, until November 24, for the US West Phoenix petition at Thursday's meeting. An FCC official said the agency wanted to get a "generic framework" in place to evaluate all requests for pricing deregulation before acting on the specific filings. "The rulemaking will lay out a process," the official said. Not everyone agrees on the importance of giving the Bells greater pricing