COMPANY TOWN ANNEX

Court Says Phone Firms Can Enter Cable TV Business: A federal appeals court ruled that telephone companies may sell television programming directly to their customers. A unanimous three-judge panel of the U.S. 4th Circuit Court agreed with U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III, who last year declared the federal government’s ban on sales an unconstitutional violation of free-speech rights. Congress enacted the ban in 1984 to protect cable television companies from competition from telephone monopolies. The Justice Department, the Federal Communications Commission and the National Cable Television Assn. argued that telephone companies still could sell TV programming to other cable systems or TV stations. The ban was challenged by Bell Atlantic-Virginia, a unit of Bell Atlantic Corp.