Supreme Court Denies Appeal In SBC Deregulation Ruling

Tuesday, July 3rd 2007, 6:01 pm

By: News On 6

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) _ The Oklahoma Supreme Court on Tuesday denied a Cox Communications bid to overturn a 2005 Corporation Commission decision to deregulate SBC Communications from most price controls in the state.

The Cox appeal argued that SBC, Oklahoma's largest telephone provider, did not provide sufficient evidence to justify deregulation. It said there was no evidence that deregulating SBC, now AT&T, will result in lower prices and more choices for Oklahoma consumers.

Cox was joined in the appeal by AARP Oklahoma.

The three-member commission voted 2-1 for the deregulation order, with Commissioner Bob Anthony providing the dissenting vote.

``In this appeal from an order of the commission that reclassifies all but three of SBC's intrastate retail telecommunications services as competitive and gives SBC pricing and tariffing flexibility, our review of the record in its entirety reveals no reason to reverse the commission's decision,'' the Supreme Court said.

``The commission correctly decided to treat this proceeding as legislative in nature and its order is supported by the law and substantial evidence.''