Topeka ? The Kansas Corporation Commission indicated Thursday it would keep price controls over most major telephone services offered by SBC Communications Inc., the largest phone company in the state.

The three-member commission was unanimous in retaining price controls over SBC’s basic residential and business phone service, and a majority moved to retain individual price controls over individual extras, such as caller ID.

But a majority of commissioners did agree to grant SBC more flexibility in offering rates for packages of services that bundle many extras.

An order finalizing the KCC decision is scheduled to be drawn up by June 27.

“There are still protections in place,” said Janet Buchanan, chief of the KCC’s telecommunications division.

Steve Rarrick, an attorney for the Citizens’ Utility Ratepayer Board, also liked what he heard during the 2 1/2-hour KCC discussion.

“We are very pleased with the result,” Rarrick said.

Dave Kerr, president of SBC Kansas, said he was pleased with some areas where the KCC said it would deregulate.

“Whether they went far enough, we’ll have to see,” Kerr said.

SBC requested deregulation in Topeka, Kansas City, Kan., and Wichita, saying the company faced major competition in those markets.

State law says former monopolies such as SBC can petition for deregulation if they can prove that local markets have become competitive, and that such competition is sustainable.

SBC argued that market competition would keep prices competitive and help consumers.

But a number of consumer groups and companies opposed SBC’s move, including WorldNet LLC, a subsidiary of The World Company, which also owns the Lawrence Journal-World and Sunflower Broadband.

WorldNet operates telephone service through Sunflower’s cable lines in Lawrence, Eudora, Tonganoxie and Basehor, and has expansion plans in the Kansas City area.

SBC has nearly 1 million phone lines throughout Kansas; about 200,000 of those are “POTS” lines. POTS stands for plain old telephone service and refers to the no-frills, one-line service for $15.70 per month.

Disagreement arose among commissioners about whether to remove price controls on extras, such as call waiting, caller ID and call forwarding.

Commissioner Michael Moffet said he wanted to remove price restrictions.

“We ought to let the markets work and see if they won’t engender the kind of price and service competition that we all want to have,” Moffet said.

When Moffet, a Lawrence resident, was appointed to the KCC in 2004, he was working for a Texas public affairs consulting company providing legislative and regulatory affairs advice to the president of SBC Kansas.

Commission Chairman Brian Moline and Commissioner Robert Krehbiel disagreed with Moffet on his push to remove restrictions, saying there wasn’t adequate competition in most places for most services to provide price discipline.

On another decision, the commission agreed to deregulate SBC prices in Wichita for businesses with multitelephone lines. The commission said there was enough competition in that market to free SBC from price controls for that particular group of customers.