The new incumbent

In 1993 after being appointed head of the Justice Department's antitrust division, Anne Bingaman thought she had left telecom for good. For the previous four years, she had represented a group of consumers in a class action suit against BellSouth, and the Justice Department seemed a good place to get away from the legal tussles of the market.

The Telecom Act of 1996 got in the way, though, throwing Bingaman back into the spotlight as one of the administration's key lobbyists on Capitol Hill during the crafting of that legislation. "I spent those three-and-a-half years heavily focused on local monopolies and how to open them to competition. I got so darned interested [that] I did not want to go back to law practice," Bingaman says.

After leaving the DOJ in 1997 and ending an 18-month stint with LCI, Bingaman has landed at dba Communications, putting her in the unique spot of heading a newly formed incumbent local exchange carrier. The carrier was formed by three private equity firms and several prominent Hispanic-American investors to operate mostly rural- and small-market exchanges in the Southwest. The company this year acquired 399,084 access lines in New Mexico and parts of Texas, plus an additional 140,000 lines in Oklahoma. The company will be among the top 20 in the U.S. as soon as the deal closes, but its largest markets are Broken Arrow, Okla., with 71,000 lines and Texarkana with 52,000 lines.

For Bingaman, who has roots in the Southwest, the biggest challenge is reconnecting with customers in towns where GTE often pulled up its local presence to concentrate on larger cities. In fact, the first three months of her tenure were spent almost entirely on the road, meeting with local leaders in towns where dba will operate. "The larger companies, as they move up market, basically lose focus on the small markets," she says. "We see tremendous opportunity in mid- to small-size cities."

And though the markets the company is picking up are small, the network plant is relatively advanced, thanks in part to Texas regulations that require all-fiber for interoffice facilities. That likely won't lead to the latest in services this year, but it provides a good foundation, Bingaman says.

"We really want to partner with our communities," she says. "Over time as our capital budget takes effect, the technology will roll out."