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

DATE: THURSDAY, November 4, 1993                   TAG: 9311040217
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: RON BROWN STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

U.S. STAFFS MAY GET TV-LINKED PHONES

Federal employees in Roanoke soon will be able not only to talk to cohorts in other cities, but possibly see them as well.

That will be just one of the features of a new state-of-the-art telecommunications system set for the Poff Building by month's end.

The official date for the changeover is Nov. 22, said the General Services Administration, the government's landlord.

On that date, federal employees will be connected to a system which could allow them to conduct teleconference calls with closed-circuit television hookups.

That feature depends on agencies buying the necessary equipment, which would cost $20,000 to $50,000.

That still might be attractive to federal agencies, who are under pressure to trim travel budgets, said John Waldeyer, a national accounts manager for Bell Atlantic in Philadelphia.

"The telecommunications feature is under study by some of those agencies," he said.

Waldeyer, who made a presentation to federal authorities in Roanoke in August, said the new fiber-optics systems will bring greater clarity to telephone conversations and greater accuracy to fax and computer messages.

The project is part of a yearlong federal communications overhaul in Virginia, Maryland and West Virginia, said John Thompson, a General Services Administration spokesman.

Last year, Bell Atlantic, the parent company of C&P Telephone, was awarded an $18 million contract to convert federal buildings to fiber-optic communications.

The government says the new system will allow federal agencies to transmit volumes of computer data and fax messages while keeping telephone lines open.

To accommodate the new system, however, federal agencies will need new local telephone numbers with an 857 prefix.

The numbers, which will range from 2000 to 2999, have not been assigned.

The General Services Administration hopes to minimize the impact of midyear changes by having calls made to old numbers transferred to the new numbers for 30 days.

The federal conversion to fiber optics began in Huntington, W.Va., in April.

The final changeover in the Mid-Atlantic region is to take place in December in Baltimore.

by CNB