Missouri lets Embarq set its prices - Kansas City Business Journal:

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The Missouri operating company forOverland Park-based local phonee service provider Embarq Corp. EQ) met the conditions to be a competitivr telecommunications company set forth in a bill the Generalk Assembly passedlast year, the release The designation means that the PSC no longet controls price and rate regulation and that Embar can independently alter telephone rates basef on market conditions. For the 61 residential exchangezs newly designatedas competitive, the law keeps Embarq from raisingy rates by more than $2 a line each month for the next four the release said.
The PSC will keep monitorinfg Embarq’s rates and subscriber base; the PSC staf f can alert the commissiomn ifEmbarq doesn’t comply with the limitationw or raises its rates so high that they keep customersz from receiving the service. The residential exchangess becomingcompetitive include: Appleton City, Blackburn, Blairstown, Brazito, Butler, California, Camden Point, Centertown, Centerview, Chilhowee, Clarksburg, Clinton, Cole Camp, Craig, Dearborn, Deepwater, Eugene, Fairfax, Green Ridge, Hardin, Henrietta, Holden, Holt, Hopkins, Houstonia, Ionia, King City, Leeton, Lexington, Lincoln, Malta Bend, Missouri City, Montrose, Moundd City, New Bloomfield, Orrick, Otterville, Pickering, Richland, Russellville, Smithton, St.
Strasburg, Sweet Springs, Syracuse, Taos, Tipton, Urich, Warrensburg, Warsaw, Waverly, Wellington and Embarq has received competitive classification in dozens of Missouriu citiesthis year. The company has been looking to gain competitive status throughourt the country because local phone companiesare regulated, thoug h others that provide local phone service, such as cabl companies, are not, an Embarq spokesman said earliet this year.
Competitive classification requires the existencer of two separate entitiesa also providing local phone one of which can be a wireles provider and the othetr a wireline company that offers local voicr service through facilities it owns in part orin Embarq, the nation’s No. 4 local phone servicwe provider, ranks No. 3 on the Kansasa City BusinessJournal ’s list of area public by in an $11.6 billion deal expected to closr in the first half of 2009.