SBC after long distance market in CA
SBC has been eager to enter California's long-distance market because of its size, estimated at $10.5 billion, according to this Wall Street Journal story (subscription required):
Under the Telecommunications Act of 1996, Baby Bells can begin selling long-distance in their home states only after convincing local and federal regulators that their local markets there are open to competition.
SBC dominates local phone service in 13 states and controls a third of the nation's phone lines. About a third of the company's access lines are in California. SBC currently sells long-distance in Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri and Connecticut.
For SBC, winning local approval in California has been a long and often bitter fight. The company estimates that it has spent more than four years and $1 billion completing the application. In the past year alone, the company has been fined more than $52 million by state regulators for sales and marketing abuses in the residential phone and high-speed Internet-service markets.