BellSouth wants city to go out of business.

• Author: Murray, Arthur O.
• Position: Tar Heel Tattler

Through three quarters of 2002, Atlanta-based BellSouth Corp. grossed $16.7 billion. So why is it suing Laurinburg, population 15,980, over a three-year, $72,000 contract with a Fayetteville company that sells Internet access as a sideline to installing and maintaining computer networks? BellSouth says that the city is violating state law by selling excess capacity on its fiber-optic network to Schoollink Inc., which, in turn, is swiping BellSouth Internet customers.

It's the principle of the thing, says Clifton Metcalf, spokesman for BellSouth's North Carolina operations, who wouldn't comment directly on the lawsuit. "Government, by definition, sets the ground rules by which companies operate and has the ability to subsidize operations through taxation. They have advantages against whomever." That's why state law lists services, such as electricity, water and cable television, that cities can provide. Services that a city is not specifically allowed to provide are prohibited, he says.

Nonsense, says City Manager Joe Huffman, who notes that BellSouth was offered the same contract as Schoollink. He likens the case to leasing space on city utility poles for BellSouth phone lines. "We've got an infrastructure in place...