BLS Bellsouth Cp

BellSouth and Granite Telecommunications Sign Long-Term Commercial Agreement ATLANTA, Oct. 13 /PRNewswire/ -- BellSouth (NYSE:BLS) and Granite Telecommunications today announced the signing of a long-term commercial agreement for the provisioning of wholesale local phone services throughout the nine-state BellSouth region in the Southeast. With the successful completion of this negotiation, BellSouth has now reached 22 commercial agreements with its wholesale customers. "The negotiations with our wholesale customers continue to be successful as we jointly recognize the opportunity to replace unproductive regulatory battles with free market economics," said Keith Cowan, president of BellSouth Interconnection Services. "This agreement with Granite provides certainty to both of our companies in lieu of continued regulatory uncertainty," noted Cowan. Rob Hale, president of Granite Telecommunications, said, "We are pleased to solidify our future with BellSouth. Granite has already signed new commercial agreements with two other ILECs and is close to wrapping up another that will complete the UNE-P replacement program for our nationwide coverage. This will give our customers stability and clarity for years to come. Strong service, useful software and meaningful savings will continue for our growing base of customers." About Granite Telecommunications Granite Telecommunications, a privately held nationwide wholesaler of telecom services based in Quincy, Mass., serves customers in all of the BellSouth states. Nationally, Granite serves more than 200,000 local lines in 49 states. With over $100 million in annual revenues, Granite services 5,000 customers in over 50,000 locations in 49 states. Forty of the Fortune 100 companies utilize Granite services. For more information, visit http://www.granitenet.com/ . About BellSouth Corporation BellSouth Corporation is a Fortune 100 communications company headquartered in Atlanta, Ga., and a parent company of Cingular Wireless, the nation's second largest wireless voice and data provider. Backed by award winning customer service, BellSouth offers the most comprehensive and innovative package of voice and data services available in the market. Through BellSouth Answers(R), residential and small business customers can bundle their local and long distance service with dial up and high speed DSL Internet access, satellite television and Cingular(R) Wireless service. For businesses, BellSouth provides secure, reliable local and long distance voice and data networking solutions. BellSouth also offers online and directory advertising through BellSouth(R) RealPages.com(R) and The Real Yellow Pages(R). More information about BellSouth can be found at http://www.bellsouth.com/ . DATASOURCE: BellSouth Corporation CONTACT: Al Schweitzer of BellSouth Corporation, +1-404-829-8741, ; or Geoff Cookman of Granite Telecommunications, +1-617-933-5521, or Web site: http://www.bellsouth.com/ http://www.granitenet.com/ Company News On-Call: http://www.prnewswire.com/comp/095650.html

Copyright