Founded in 1984, TelAmerica Long Distance Service is a Louisiana local carrier offering what customers want most: the best prices and local accountability. Because we are a local company, we are able to design value-added services that other carriers can't provide.

TelAmerica was founded by John Brydels and Jon Seger, longtime friends who came up with the idea in college. Brydels was working on a master's degree in accounting; Seger was working on an M.B.A. During the breakup of AT&T, Brydels wrote a class paper on that phenomenon and on long-distance resale. The two saw that AT&T was destined to lose some of its market share.

The goal of their business venture was to provide Baton Rouge with a more responsive local long distance company. Since then, TelAmerica has experienced a steady growth, with its greatest increases in the past two years. With growth rates of 25 percent or more over the past six years, TelAmerica expanded our sales staff, sales offices and customer service and provisioning divisions.

The reason for our growth is simple: excellent long distance rates combined with quality customer service. Because we tailor our programs to the specific needs of Louisiana, especially Baton Rouge, we are able to offer lower prices. Our network is designed for the calling patterns of the customer. We know that a large number of calls are made from Baton Rouge to New Orleans, so we can engineer our circuits accordingly.

Offering a superior rates only works well with personal customer service. Our customer service staff provides countless hours of phone assistance and on-site technical support to long distance customers from all over Louisiana and across the nation. Because many of our customers prefer to speak about service options on an individual basis, our representatives will go out to discuss billing or service options with many of our Louisiana residents.

But don't just think of us as a local company, with offices in Baton Rouge, New Orleans and Lafayette, we are reaching new customers daily with excellent prices and an expanding list of value-added services. Having added equal access, fiber optics, digital switching, toll-free 800 services, advanced billing options, data services and Internet services, our next major undertaking will be local telephone services.