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

DATE: FRIDAY, October 15, 1993                   TAG: 9310150120
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: A-7   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: GREG EDWARDS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

BELL MERGER GIVES LIFT TO BOUCHER BILL

Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Abingdon, said Thursday his legislation that would allow regional telephone companies to offer other communications services - including cable television - got a big boost with the announcement that Bell Atlantic and TV cable giant Tele-Communications Inc. plan to merge.

"My bill will pass this Congress," Boucher said.

He said congressional supporters have come flocking to the measure in the wake of Wednesday's merger announcement and two other recent developments:

A federal court decision in Alexandria that declared unconstitutional the restrictions against phone companies owning cable television systems.

The flood of complaints that washed over Congress when cable companies began raising rates in September, despite new federal regulations that were supposed to lower rates.

The announcement of the proposed merger underscores the need for Congress to remove barriers to competition in the telecommunications marketplace, Boucher said. The merger, valued between $16 billion and $33 billion, would join Bell Atlantic, one of seven regional telephone companies, and TCI, the nation's largest TV cable operator.

Boucher said some of the benefits of the merger would be lost because a law barring phone companies from offering cable television service will force TCI to sell all of its cable systems within Bell Atlantic's territory.

Boucher disagreed with some critics who have called the proposed merger anti-competitive. "Some people are suspicious of anything that is big," he said.

After barriers to competition are removed, Boucher said, consumers would have the choice of a variety of companies offering both cable and local telephone service. Besides allowing phone companies to offer services they have been forbidden in the past to provide, Boucher's legislation would require phone companies to open their lines to competitors for those services.

Boucher predicted that regional phone companies, cable TV companies, broadcasters and movie companies will merge over the next few years into a variety of major communications companies that will compete with each other to offer a variety of services nationally.

The legislation is before the House Energy and Commerce Committee telecommunications subcommittee. Boucher said he is working with the subcommittee's chairman, Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., to resolve some of Markey's concerns about the measure's effect on universal phone service.

Markey wants the bill amended to ensure that competitors who take away phone company revenues in lucrative markets would be required to share in the expense when phone companies have to provide service to customers in rural areas, where the expenses sometimes mean a loss to the company.

by CNB