BellSouth Corp. on Tuesday announced striking a commercial agreement to provide MCI Inc. wholesale local phone services.

The agreement covering BellSouths nine-state territory in the Southeast comes on the heels of federal regulations that ended government-mandated wholesale access to the networks controlled by Atlanta-based BellSouth, SBC Communications Inc., Qwest Communications International Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc.

BellSouth is extremely pleased with the progress weve made in negotiating and signing more than 100 commercial agreements, including this latest agreement with our longtime wholesale customer MCI, Rex Adams, president of BellSouth Interconnection Services, said in a statement.