Bell Atlantic Pulls Back From Video Network Plan : Telecom: Phone firm asks FCC to suspend two pending requests, citing technological changes.

WASHINGTON — Underscoring the difficulties surrounding telephone company efforts to enter the television business, Bell Atlantic Corp. on Tuesday pulled back from an ambitious plan to build a video network serving 3 million East Coast customers.

In asking the Federal Communications Commission to suspend two pending requests to offer video programming, the Philadelphia local phone giant said that “significant technological and other developments” have caused it to re-evaluate its plans.

Bell Atlantic, based in Philadelphia, was the first Bell company to win federal court permission to provide cable television service in its five-state region. The 1993 case prompted other phone companies to successfully challenge a 1984 Cable Act provision barring phone companies from owning and programming cable systems inside their telephone service areas.

With competition mounting in many segments of the telecommunications industry, phone companies of all stripes have been racing to position themselves to offer new interactive TV services as well as traditional television programming.

A Bell Atlantic spokesman explained Tuesday’s move by saying the cost and quality of fiber-optic technology had improved so much that the company might scuttle plans to offer video over a “hybrid” network of coaxial cable and fiber and instead build a more advanced network based on switched digital fiber optics alone. The hair-thin strands of fiber-optic cable can carry thousands of times more data than the copper wire that now makes up most communications networks.

But some in the industry suspect other factors could be at play and that Bell Atlantic was re-evaluating not only the technology but also the market conditions.

Bell Atlantic had planned to charge customers $8 to $12 a month for a coaxial cable line--the same line that would carry telephone service into their homes--to provide cable television service. Customers would then have paid fees for programs, except for their local broadcast channels. Bell Atlantic is also getting into the programming business through a joint venture that includes two other phone companies and is run by former CBS Television executive Howard Stringer.

Under FCC rules, phone companies are required to disclose what technology they will use to deliver the new video service called “video dial tone.” It was unclear Tuesday how many other phone companies share Bell Atlantic’s change of heart. But an FCC spokeswoman said no other regional Bell phone company has so far moved to suspend its video applications.

Company spokesman Eric Rabe said Bell Atlantic will decide in the next few weeks whether to file a new application with the FCC to build a switched digital fiber-optic network.

The areas that would have been covered by Bell Atlantic’s video service plan were Baltimore; northern New Jersey; Philadelphia-Delaware Valley; Pittsburgh; Hampton Roads, Va., and Washington, D.C.