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Communications Workers of America Voices Support of Bell Atlantic Entry into Long Distance in New Yo

The 630,000-member Communications Workers of America today announced support of Bell Atlantic's request to provide long distance service to customers in New York.

CWA President Morton Bahr stated: "Bell Atlantic has met the requirements of the 1996 Telecommunications Act to open its local network to competition. Competition is alive, well and thriving in New York."

He said allowing Bell Atlantic into long distance will be good for consumers by providing increased choice in that market, with one-stop shopping for communications services, and he noted that it will spur the growth of high-skilled, career jobs in New York state for employees who provide customer support and maintain the network. CWA currently represents about 34,000 Bell Atlantic workers in New York.

The union pointed out that Bell Atlantic satisfied 850 out of 855 test criteria of customer support systems - systems that interact with Bell Atlantic's network to switch customers to competing providers - as determined by independent auditor KPMG Peat Marwick.

Competitors to Bell Atlantic are providing one million local phone lines already in New York and have deployed more than 6,000 route-miles of fiber optics and at least 47 local switches, according to CWA. Competitors are exchanging 2.5 billion minutes of local traffic each month over a Bell Atlantic interconnection network that is almost one- third the size of the company's own New York network.

"Allowing Bell Atlantic into long distance creates a level playing field among telecom providers to compete based on price and quality, without regulatory barriers that favor some providers over others," said CWA's Bahr.


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