Slow switch to FTS 2001 blamed on phone companies

Phone companies are taking too long to gear up FTS 2001, the government's new long-distance telephone service contracts, a federal official said at a conference Monday.

Sandra Bates, deputy commissioner of the General Services Administration's Federal Technology Service, complained about companies' "stonewalling, lack of cooperation, misrepresentations to customers" and their failure to invest sufficient resources to get the work done. Agencies and vendors "need to pick up the pace," Bates said.

MCI Worldcom Inc. and Sprint Communications Co. L.P. hold the two FTS 2001 long-distance contracts. The two companies announced plans to merge last October.

A Sprint spokesman agreed the transition has not gone swiftly since the two contracts were awarded in December 1998 and January 1999. "It's a fairly accepted fact that things have been moving slower than they should on this transition," said Brad Bass, a spokesman for Sprint Government Systems Division. "But I really do think we are over the hump on this." The pace has accelerated recently, he explained.

MCI Worldcom officials did not respond to a request for comments.

The government has a total of 62,608 sites that must be switched over to FTS 2001. Agencies are working to meet a December 2000 deadline for expiration of the predecessor contracts, known as FTS 2000. So far, only 13,602 sites have been switched over. While those sites include some of the larger federal facilities, 65 percent of the transition work remains unfinished, Bates said.

In a followup interview, FTS Commissioner Dennis Fischer said he's disturbed by both the slow FTS 2001 transition and the delays in moving federal agencies in major cities to the new local phone service contracts known as Metropolitan Area Acquisitions. He blamed everyone involved, saying, "There is dirt on all sets of hands. The winners, our partners, have not been as quick to get there with service and support. And the contract losers have had a hard time letting go of business."

He apparently referred to AT&T Corp., which had the larger share of FTS 2000 business but did not win a successor contract, as well as the local phone companies that lost business in the MAA buys.

Fischer said he'd like to see the same ease in transition as consumers get when they switch long-distance providers. "We're getting ripped off and we're not going to take it anymore," Fischer said at the conference. He would also like long distance and local carriers to play by the rules of "fair and relentless competition."

Bates and Fischer spoke at the TeleStrategies Federal Telecommunications Conference in Falls Church, Va.