AT&T Corp. won permission from the Illinois Commerce Commission to offer local telephone service in the Chicago area, the company said Thursday.
AT&T, which hopes to start offering local service sometime early next year, will woo Chicago customers with innovations, lower prices and better service, said Scott Etzier, AT&T regional vice president.
Although several companies now compete with Ameritech Corp. for commercial customers in Chicago’s Loop, AT&T will be the first to court Ameritech’s residential customers throughout the area, said Etzier.
He cautioned, however, that implementing AT&T’s plan depends upon successfully negotiating an agreement with Ameritech, the Bell company for the Great Lakes region, to use its network at a wholesale rate so that resale of service by AT&T is possible.
While Ameritech has reached wholesale-rate agreements with much smaller competitors in recent weeks, an agreement with AT&T has yet to be worked out, Etzier said.
