Court Allows AT&T; to Move Into Electronic Publishing Field

A federal judge in Washington cleared the way Friday for American Telephone & Telegraph to move into electronic publishing, opening the door for a major new player to create and sell computer databases, videotext and other information services.

U.S. District Judge Harold H. Greene dropped his 7-year-old ban, effective Aug. 24, that limited AT&T;’s role in the fast-emerging information services business to transmitting data for others.

Greene imposed the ban in 1982 with the expectation that competition in both long-distance telecommunications and electronic publishing would develop sufficiently by now. As defined by Greene, electronic publishing involves owning, originating, compiling or editing information that can be transported over AT&T;’s telecommunications network.

Since 1982, Greene noted, both MCI and U S Sprint have developed high-quality national and international telecommunications networks, and more than 500 other carriers provide regional long-distance services. Moreover, the electronic publishing industry today includes such large firms as Knight-Ridder, Citicorp, Dow Jones, Reuters, as well as General Electric, IBM and Sears, which provide videotext services.

Room for Competition

AT&T; spokesman Herb Linnen said Greene’s ruling “opens a broad range of options, some of them significant,” but declined to speculate which areas of electronic publishing the company might first enter.

While there are hundreds of providers of such on-line services as news, sports, weather and specialty information, there’s still plenty of room for competition, said Danforth Austin, director of corporate relations for Dow Jones.

In urging Greene last April to lift his ban, AT&T; said it didn’t plan to enter the electronic Yellow Pages and television businesses--two areas of special concern to the seven regional Bell telephone companies spun off from AT&T; in 1984 and to the broadcast and cable television industries. Greene has only partially lifted a ban against the so-called Baby Bells from entering the same field, allowing them in 1987 to transmit--but not originate--information services. That allows the regional companies such as Pacific Telesis in San Francisco to offer such services as voice mail message service, but little else.

Diane Oberg, a spokeswoman for Pacific Telesis, said the parent of Pacific Bell maintains that Greene’s arguments relating to competition in the electronic publishing industry and long-distance fields support its contention that the regional companies also should be freed of restrictions.

“We think it is fine that AT&T; can be in electronic publishing, and we think that we should be in it, too,” Oberg said.

AT&T;’s closest competitor in long-distance phone service, MCI Communications, had not objected to the ban being revoked, said Bernard Goodrich, director of public relations for MCI. However, MCI was relieved that the judge did not allow local phone companies into the field, which MCI strongly opposes because “they could use their bottleneck monopolies to impede the competition,” Goodrich said.

‘Golden Opportunity’

Some industry experts, noting some major flops by firms trying to develop a U.S. videotext market, speculated that AT&T; may not rush into electronic publishing immediately.

“This is a golden opportunity,” said William Rich, an analyst for Northern Business Information/Datacom in New York. “There are enormous opportunities for on-line services such as airplane and car reservations. The sky’s the limit.”

But a spokesman for the American Newspaper Publishers Assn., which had strongly supported the 1982 ban, said competition has developed enough to keep AT&T; from dominating electronic publishing.