ATLANTA -- A first-of-its-kind program that lets retailers sell prepackaged home-phone services right off the shelf will debut this month from BellSouth, the $19 billion
regional Bell operating company.
One of the authors has been working as a consultant with a
Regional Bell Operating Company since the spring of 1994.
The average
regional Bell operating company, such as Nynex or Bell Atlantic, is in an even worse position.
His first move was to sign up with Bell Atlantic, the
regional Bell operating company serving the Mid-Atlantic, for a service called Centrex Extend, which charges a fixed nominal fee ($4 per month) per line for a group of designated voice connections, set up like a conference call.
The SMDS service introduced by the Data Communications Group of Pac Bell, a subsidiary of
regional Bell operating company Pacific Telesis, provides dial-up communications links for high-speed transmission of large digital files representing four-color, image-intensive documents.