Sprint Exec to Become PacBell President

Pacific Bell, saying it needs fresh management talent to lead it into unfamiliar competitive terrain, on Monday named Sprint Corp. executive David Dorman as president and chief executive.

Dorman, 40, assumes posts held by Phil Quigley, who on April 1 became chairman and CEO of Pacific Telesis Group, the holding company that gets 98% of its revenue from PacBell. Quigley remains chairman of PacBell, the exclusive provider of local phone service in two-thirds of California.

It was the second time in 10 months that Pacific Telesis went outside the company for a key manager, and Quigley said that trend will continue as the phone company positions itself for a new era in telecommunications.

The biggest change facing PacBell is its probable entry into the long-distance phone business within California, a $2-billion-plus market from which it has been barred since the 1984 breakup of the Bell System.

Critics have questioned whether the culture of a regulated utility such as PacBell is suited to free-market competition. AT&T;, which was thrust into competitive businesses at the time of the Bell System breakup, took the better part of a decade to adjust.

“I think part of the model you are seeing is the AT&T; model of the past few years, where people are brought in from the outside to stimulate the company and change traditional Bell company thinking,” said Craig Ellis, telecommunications analyst at Wheat First Securities in Richmond, Va.

Dorman was corporate executive vice president and president of business services for Sprint, the country’s third-largest long-distance company after AT&T; and MCI.

Dorman will seek to lead PacBell into a market that Sprint, his employer of the past 13 years, says local phone companies have no business entering. Congress and federal courts are weighing whether PacBell and the other regional Bell companies should be allowed back into the long-distance market.

Indeed, some critics say the entry of PacBell and the other Baby Bells companies into long-distance could threaten the survival of Sprint, which has a far smaller share of the market than AT&T; and MCI.

All three companies, as well as consumer groups, argue that as long as PacBell retains a local monopoly--and controls the switches through which all long-distance calls must pass--it could unfairly seize the lion’s share of the long-distance market.

At a news conference, Dorman said he and Quigley “had some fun sparring about that in our early talks. . . . I have certainly seen both sides of that debate.” But he said the threat to Sprint is “way overblown.”

Quigley called Dorman “a battle-hardened competitor” and said PacBell “needs to bring talent in where we don’t have the kind of competitive experience we need.”

In September, PacBell hired marketing executive Michael J. Fitzpatrick from the CEO’s post at Network Systems Corp.