51.   As well as getting a part of local phone charges, the free services depend on revenue from advertising and electronic commerce.

52.   At its meeting yesterday, the commission postponed a vote on rules for local phone competition until Monday.

53.   At first, businesses will be the only ones to have a choice of companies for their local phone service.

54.   At issue are the fees that dominant local phone companies charge to lease their lines to rivals that want to offer competing services.

55.   At the same time, their local phone customers may be poached by other phone companies.

56.   At this moment of sky-high Internet valuations, that can sometimes make it difficult for the old-line local phone giants to pull off big acquisitions.

57.   Atlanta-based BellSouth, which offers local phone service in nine states in the southeast, seeks to offer customers in South Carolina and Louisiana long-distance service.

58.   Barr has also filed successful lawsuits blocking decrees by the Federal Communications Commission aimed at making GTE and other local phone companies more open to competition.

59.   Bay Area residents will hear a loud pin drop today as Sprint launches its new local phone service to compete with Pacific Bell.

60.   Because ISPs mainly receive calls and rearely make them, most of the fees for local phone traffic flows from the regional Bell companies, to the local upstarts.