Psc Gives More Time On Bellsouth

The Florida Public Service Commission asked its staff to clarify how it wants BellSouth Corp. to better measure its performance when it comes to working with other local telephone companies.

At its monthly regulatory meeting Tuesday in Tallahassee, the PSC gave the staff another month to collect data that would help BellSouth set up a permanent way of evaluating its operating support systems, which help other phone companies establish and run local phone service.

Under the current system, Florida local phone giant BellSouth pays penalty fees to either the competitive local phone company or to the state if its operating systems fail.

The payments are measured by problems with issue such as maintenance, repair and billing, and increase based on how frequent they are or how long they last.