AT&T; Wants Judge’s OK to Own Data Services

WASHINGTON —  American Telephone & Telegraph Co. on Friday asked a federal judge to lift provisions in a consent decree that prohibit AT&T; from owning the computer data, financial data and other information services it transmits on its wires.

AT&T;, in a brief filed with U.S. District Judge Harold Greene, noted that the agreement under which the old Bell System was broken up allowed the restrictions on “electronic publishing” to be lifted after seven years unless it were shown it should be continued. The prohibition on electronic publishing was worked out on Aug. 24, 1982.

Greene, who oversaw the Bell breakup, stated at that time that the burden after seven years would be on any opponents of removal “to show that competitive conditions clearly require the maintenance of the ban,” AT&T;’s filing said.

The company said the leading firms in the electronic publishing industry “are large, financially strong corporations.”

AT&T; spokesman Herb Linnen said those include Knight-Ridder (on-line database services), Citicorp, Dow Jones and Reuters (securities quotations and financial information), Dun & Bradstreet and TRW (credit data) and General Electric, IBM and Sears (videotex services).

Linnen said AT&T; had no plans to enter the electronic yellow pages and television businesses--two areas that are of special concern to the seven regional Bell telephone companies that were spun off from AT&T; in 1984 and to the broadcast and cable-TV industries.

The company, quoting from the consent decree guiding AT&T;’s breakup, said: “There are now ‘means other than AT&T;’s network for the transmission of the messages of electronic publishers,’ and those firms providing electronic publishing services unquestionably have ‘sufficient strength to permit them to compete.’ ”

It cited MCI Communications Corp. and US Sprint as being among those transmission competitors and said “it is beyond serious dispute that these carriers offer ample alternatives to all of the AT&T; interexchange transmission services used by electronic publishers.”

MCI officials did not immediately return calls for comment.

Bill McCloskey, a spokesman for one of the seven regional Bell companies, BellSouth, said company officials had not seen the filing and could not comment.

Robert L. Smith Jr., executive director of the Videotex Industry Assn., said AT&T; could be a “potentially very important participant” in electronic publishing, “and I think probably the one area to watch out is if they use this as an opportunity to get into electronic yellow pages.”

Noting that the regional Bell companies are banned from this area, he said a “vacuum” existed there.

In 1987, Greene gave the regional Bell companies permission to transmit but not originate information services, which, besides electronic publishing, also includes data processing and related computer services.