
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, January 11, 1994                   TAG: 9401110104
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: B-5   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

CLASSROOMS TO GET FREE PLUG INTO INFORMATION HIGHWAY

Prodded by a key congressman, two telecommunications companies said Monday they will help one-fourth of the nation's schools plug in - free of charge - to computer and video information networks.

Bell Atlantic Corp. and Telecommunications Inc., which agreed in October to merge, said they are starting the largest corporate program ever linking classrooms to the "information superhighway" now under construction.

Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., had urged the telecommunications industry last month to do more to assure access to high-tech information networks for schoolchildren in poorer areas.

Markey, chairman of the House subcommittee on telecommunications and finance, praised the two companies Monday. He is sponsoring legislation to oversee competition for local phone service and between cable TV companies.

"America cannot leave the bottom 20 to 30 percent of this population out of the knowledge-based economy and still hope to retain its economic standing," Markey said. The Bell Atlantic-TCI plan is a first step in making multimedia education accessible to schoolchildren, Markey said.

Bell Atlantic and TCI held simultaneous news conferences in Washington and Los Angeles to announce their plans, with reporters in each city able to question company officials in the other via a TV hookup.

Company officials said they hope eventually to provide free access to computer and cable networks for 26,000 elementary and secondary school in areas served by the two companies.

"This commitment to education means that student and teachers will have at their fingertips homework hot lines, parent-teacher discussions, video materials and a world of electronically stored data," said Raymond Smith, chairman and chief executive officer of Bell Atlantic. His company is the regional local-telephone carrier in the mid-Atlantic states.

The companies provided a glimpse of how the system works with TV hookups to Christopher Columbus School in Union City, N.J., and the Carrolton, Ga., school system. Those schools are among the first to be connected to the information networks.

by CNB