High-Tech Firms Applaud Easing of Limits on Exports : Trade: Officials project market for such goods could reach $150 billion during the next 10 years.

Technology companies large and small said Thursday that they stand to profit from the Clinton Administration’s decision to ease limits on sales of some computers and telecommunications gear to former communist bloc nations.

With officials projecting that the market for such goods could reach $150 billion during the next 10 years, high-profile companies such as AT&T; and California’s Sun Microsystems, Hewlett-Packard and Silicon Graphics expect to gain as Russia, Eastern Europe and China rush to upgrade their information and communications networks.

Smaller companies, many of them in Silicon Valley and Southern California, also will benefit, executives said Thursday.

The U.S. Commerce Department’s announcement Wednesday that it planned to scrap certain export limits followed a decision by Western nations to dissolve their Coordinating Committee on Multilateral Export Controls, known as Cocom. The Cold War institution, created in 1949, imposed strict limits on sales of items that could aid the militaries of one-time communist foes.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the crumbling of the Berlin Wall, these measures were no longer relevant. U.S. companies have complained that the restrictions crippled them in the battle for sales in high-growth markets, forcing them to ship outmoded gear.

“This was a dramatic break with the past,” said Herb Linnen, a spokesman for AT&T; in Washington.

For AT&T;, the change means the ability to freely sell--to civilian customers--sophisticated fiber optics, equipment for switching long-distance calls and software for cellular communication. The lifting of restrictions facilitates $500 million in prospective sales to the countries involved, he said.

China, he noted, has the world’s most ambitious telecommunications program, with plans to spend as much as $40 billion on its network by the year 2000. Under a memo of understanding, AT&T; has agreed to modernize much of the country’s telecommunications network and build factories and a Bell Laboratories. That agreement now “takes on new dimensions,” Linnen added.

Hewlett-Packard, based in Palo Alto, expects to reap millions of dollars in sales of low- and mid-range workstations and servers, according to spokesman Brad Whitworth. Workstations are powerful computers used for engineering and desktop publishing; servers are high-powered computers that provide information to networks of personal computers.

At International Imaging Systems in Milpitas, Calif., Chief Executive Richard Ashcroft figures the change will lighten the bureaucratic burden on about 40% of the company’s annual sales of $12 million. The company bids on government contracts for equipment to monitor disasters and measure forest land and other natural resources.

Without the need to seek export licenses for the off-the-shelf Sun, HP and Silicon Graphics workstations the company uses in its data-processing systems, International Imaging will be able to sell them much more quickly and with far less paperwork. That, in turn, will make the company better able to compete with overseas rivals.

However, Ashcroft said, the company is still limited when it comes to sales to military customers. For example, a deal signed Thursday with China’s air force for a flood-control management system falls under residual license restrictions, even though the system won’t be used for military purposes per se. “This is a step in the right direction,” Ashcroft said. “But technology moves faster than government.”

Administration officials and companies emphasized that stiff restrictions will remain on complex supercomputers and on any equipment that could be used in the development of nuclear, biological or chemical weapons. And trade will be off-limits to nations that support terrorism: Cuba, North Korea, Iran, Iraq, Syria and Libya.