AT&T; to Offer New Types of Cable Services : Telecommunications: The vast amounts of data contained in a TV signal would be compressed so several programs could be sent at once on one channel.

AT&T; said Monday that it would provide technology and equipment to deliver new cable TV services, including the ability to order movies and other programs any time of day.

American Telephone & Telegraph Co. said that working with partners, it would provide cable operators with the equipment needed to offer such services, including satellite transmission gear and set-top boxes consumers would use to order the shows.

Last week, industry sources said media giant Time Warner Inc. and IBM were working on a similar, though broader, home entertainment and information system that would be transmitted over cable TV.

AT&T; said its technology would electronically “compress” the vast amount of data contained in a TV signal so several programs could be sent at once on one cable channel.

That would boost the channel capacity of today’s cable systems by up to 13 times, which would allow “video on demand,” or the ability to request a movie or other program at any time from a large list, AT&T; said.

Cable TV operators have been examining video compression as a way to provide more programs without undertaking costly rewirings of their systems. AT&T; said the announcement, made in conjunction with a National Cable Television Assn. convention in Dallas, is part of its growing move into video technology. In January, AT&T; unveiled a $1,500 home-video telephone that operates over standard phone lines.

Industry analyst Peter Bernstein of Probe Research, which studies the telecommunications industry, said AT&T; has sold products to the cable industry for some time, but its latest offering appears to be an effort to broaden its sales.

“They’re looking to develop another major client base” outside the phone industry, he said.

Bernstein added that video compression will become increasingly important with the advent of high-definition TV, a technology offering clearer, wider pictures that is expected later this decade. HDTV signals contain more data than today’s TV, so there is increased need to compress the signals to send them over cable and satellite systems.

In fact, AT&T; said the signal compression technology it will use in the cable scheme arose from its work on HDTV. AT&T;, in a partnership with TV maker Zenith Electronics Corp., has proposed technology for a national HDTV standard. The AT&T; cable system would deliver TV signals via satellite with the help of ComStream Corp., a supplier of satellite products. News DataCom, a subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. Ltd., will provide equipment to process customer requests for programs.

AT&T; said it initially will offer a system to send programming via satellite to the “head end” of cable TV systems, or the incoming point of these systems. This equipment will be tested this year and should be available for sale in 1993.

The company said it is exploring partnerships for the cable TV part of the scheme, which will deliver the programming to consumers’ homes.

AT&T; said it already is working with regional phone company US West Inc. and the nation’s largest cable TV operator, TeleCommunications Inc., to explore an enhanced pay-per-view and video on demand system to be tested this summer.

International Business Machines Corp. and Time Warner plan to use IBM’s data compression technology to link cable TV subscribers with Time Warner’s movies, TV shows and other media, industry sources said. Time Warner is the second-largest cable operator. The companies had no comment on the reports.

AT&T; shares rose 75 cents to $43.875 on the New York Stock Exchange.