Phone Giants Told To Open Lines To Newcomers

State regulators Tuesday ordered US West and other established telephone companies to open their local lines to calls carried by a growing number of start-up phone companies.

US West spokesman Harry Grandstrom said the order will have little impact on his company, which already has negotiated line use by three companies and is prepared to open its lines to others at cost.

Grandstrom said he was disappointed the order precludes US West from charging an interim fee for use of its network.

The state Utilities and Transportation Commission said its order will spur competition and ultimately benefit local telephone users.

“Newcomers in the field have found it difficult, if not impossible, to compete for customers because the present companies have complete control over access to their telephone network,” the commission said in a statement.

“The implication that we have a stranglehold on the market is just wrong,” Grandstrom responded.

US West does not believe the start-up companies necessarily mean increased competition, he said.

The big companies fear the new operations will skim the cream - such as highly profitable transmission of commercial data - without offering their services to residential and rural services, Grandstrom said.

“We question whether that is really competition,” he said.

In March 1994, the state Supreme Court paved the way for the UTC action, ruling that existing exchanges have no exclusive franchise rights under state law.

Five companies already have received UTC permission to offer local service, including: Electric Lightwave Inc. of Vancouver, Wash., which brought the case before the UTC; Teleport Communications Group of Seattle; Tel-West Communications of Washington, L.L.C., of Spokane; MFS Intelenet of Washington Inc. in Seattle; and MCI Metro Access Transmission Services Inc., a subsidiary of MCI Communications Corp.