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

DATE: SATURDAY, March 18, 1995                   TAG: 9503200048
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: A6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                 LENGTH: Short

BELL ATLANTIC CLEARED TO OFFER VIDEO SERVICE

Bell Atlantic Corp. cleared a crucial regulatory hurdle Friday in its plans to become a cable television provider.

The Philadelphia-based company said U.S. District Judge Harold Greene granted it a waiver from a consent decree that broke up AT&T in 1984 that will allow it to transmit video and other signals across local telephone boundaries. Greene administers the decree.

Under the decree, signals that cross these local calling boundaries are considered a long-distance service, something Bell Atlantic and six other regional Bell companies are barred from offering.

The action will let Bell Atlantic send and receive video signals nationwide by satellite, just as cable TV companies do. Without the waiver, the phone company would have had to pay other companies to do this. The waiver also lets the company store video in a central computer, avoiding the need to build duplicate facilities throughout its region.

-Associated Press

by CNB