Verizon has moved into Chicago and begun competing with SBC for medium-to-large business customers there, marking the first time one of the former Baby Bells has competed directly with another in any market.

Qwest has also begun offering services to this market segment in Chicago.

For those of you interested in the gory details, Crain’s Chicago Business has them.

This isn’t major news for residential and small business subscribers, yet, but it may well be a harbinger of things to come. I’d like to see the companies compete with each other in the mass market segment. With the SBC-AT&T and Verizon-MCI mergers, the mass market is losing two major competitors in this space.

The future of mass market telephone service is about to get very interesting, and I’ll be here to keep you up to date.