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

DATE: FRIDAY, August 12, 1994                   TAG: 9408120078
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: A9   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                 LENGTH: Medium

PANEL OKS INFORMATION REFORM BILL

A Senate panel approved a bill Thursday that would free telecommunications companies to provide an array of futuristic services and devices.

But some provisions still face opposition when the full Senate considers the package.

The bill passed by the Senate Commerce Committee passed 18-2 embodies a compromise among members on its most contentious provision: the ground rules for local telephone companies to enter the long-distance business. Few changes were made in the measure.

Committee Chairman Ernest Hollings, D-S.C., a key architect of the bill, said the Senate may vote on it in mid-September at the earliest. The House passed a pair of similar reform bills in June.

The committee legislation would allow cable companies and local telephone companies to enter each other's businesses and would permit regional Bell operating companies to provide long-distance service and to manufacture telecommunications equipment.

One important change in the bill assures regional Bell companies that already have received permission from the courts to provide cable service that they can go forward with their plans.

The revised bill will not require Bell Atlantic or US West to wait for the Federal Communications Commission to issue regulations governing telephone companies' providing cable services. But once the FCC sets regulations, those companies will have to comply with them.

Having resolved one major conflict over the terms of entry into the long-distance business, some of the regional Bell companies have found another serious problem with the bill: their entry into the cable business.

``There are major changes that need to be made, particularly in the cable entry language,'' said Pacific Telesis Vice President Ron Stowe.

Regional phone company executives say the bill would delay their ability to provide cable service, and they planned to fight for changes on the Senate floor. But their rivals and Senate aides called it a new excuse to kill the bill.

``It's a smoke screen. ... They don't want a bill,'' said Decker Anstrom, president of the National Cable Television Association.

by CNB