FCC Lets Phone Companies Offer Wide Range of Services

The Federal Communications Commission approved phone company plans Thursday that are expected to transform the nation’s telephone network into an electronic gateway through which one day will flow a broad range of services not now widely available--from voice mail to home shopping.

The offering of these new services--many of which are already available in France--has been held back in this country by regulatory concerns that giant phone companies such as Pacific Bell, which control access to the local telephone networks, could abuse their monopoly power to favor their own enterprises over those offered by outside firms.

Because the nation’s phone system was built as a monopoly, much of its technology is geared simply to handling calls placed by phone company customers. When American Telephone & Telegraph was divested of its local telephone business nearly five years ago, AT&T; and the seven regional phone companies created to carry on local service were ordered to devise plans for opening up their networks to outside companies wanting to offer electronic services over them.

This so-called open network architecture is to treat all purveyors of services on an equal basis. Under the plans approved by the FCC, all would have equal access to the network linking them to their customers, would enjoy equal quality of connections and would pay the same fees to the phone company.

Consumers have already seen such a system at work in long-distance phone service, where customers now can select AT&T; or any of its competitors to handle their long-distance calls without having to press a score of numbers on their phones. And Pacific Bell plans to begin offering over the next two years a voice-mail service enabling callers to, among other things, leave recorded messages when lines are busy or unattended.

“This will encourage the small guy offering a specific service,” predicted Steve Sazebari, senior telecommunications analyst with Dataquest in San Jose. “This will stimulate growth in innovative telecommunications services such as home shopping, video conferencing, voice messaging, database access, electronic directories.”

A spokesman for Pacific Bell emphasized that, even with FCC approval of the plans, conversion will take “a period of years.”

“The key word is ‘eventually,’ ” said Steven Harris, Pacific Bell’s director of regulatory planning and policy.