The Minnesota Public Utilities Commission has rejected a proposal by U S WEST Communications Inc. to discontinue offering its Centrex family of business services to new customers.
According to the commission, the local-exchange carrier's plan would make it much harder for new resellers to enter the local telephone market and seriously hamper the development of competition in the state.
U S WEST had claimed that misapplication of "Centron/Centrex" offerings by smaller users had resulted in significant "tariff arbitrage" of basic business service. The company said it planned to develop a replacement offering better tailored to new market conditions. The carrier explained it had originally developed the service for large users and did not anticipate the development of tariff arbitrage by smaller users.