GTE Sues Over Fees

GTE Corp., the local phone company being acquired by Bell Atlantic Corp., filed suit in U.S. District Court in San Francisco seeking to overturn a state Public Utilities Commission decision that would force GTE to pay fees to competitors when a call to connect to the Internet is completed on a rival network. The lawsuit also seeks to block competitors from collecting the fees. At issue is whether calls made to Internet service providers should be considered local. Under federal law, phone companies pay so-called reciprocal fees to their competitors when their customers make calls to competitors’ customers. GTE argues that the rule should not apply to Internet calls because Web users visit sites far beyond their local areas. The Federal Communications Commission ruled in February that Internet calls are not local calls, though it left the issue of fees up to the states while it conducts an extensive investigation.