Telecommunications Law Sparks Marketing Blitz Phone, Cable Companies Gear Up To Pitch Broad Range Of New Services

Getting through dinner without a call from a phone or cable company could get tougher now that the telecommunications overhaul is law.

There are plenty more calls ahead, along with mail offers, broadcast and print ads as local phone, long-distance and cable companies muscle into each other’s business.

Even though you won’t be able to take phone calls on your TV set for years, the advertising blitz has begun. One ad already says, “the telephone wars are heating up.” Other campaigns begin today.

“It is a nuisance at times,” said David Rua, an insurance agent in Pittsburg, Kan. “But that’s free American enterprise. If you try to cut that down, that’s saying they can’t compete.”

And the driving purpose for the biggest communications legislation since 1934 is competition. Few companies wasted time adapting to it Thursday.

Less than an hour after President Clinton signed the bill, the largest local telephone company, GTE Corp., announced it had a contract with WorldCom Inc., the fourth-largest long-distance company, to resell long-distance service under the GTE name.

A few minutes later, AT&T Corp. Chairman Robert Allen stood before reporters in Washington and said the largest long-distance company would offer local phone service by late summer.

The goal for all is to become a one-stop provider of whatever communication service a customer seeks. The industry buzzword is “bundling,” or offering discounts for taking more than one service.

“There’s certainly going to be a rise in the level of the noise that’s out there,” said Cliff Eason, chief executive officer of SBC Communications, the telecom arm of SBC Corp., the regional Bell carrier in Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma and Texas.

“But I think customers will have an attentive ear to a company that comes at them and says ‘Here’s the deal. It’s simple. It’s reliable. It’s hassle-free,”’ Eason said.

Investors will have to sort through a frenzy of deal-making over the next few weeks.

Wall Street analysts say small long-distance companies and so-called competitive access providers, which let businesses bypass local carriers when connecting to long-distance, are in great positions to make deals or even be acquired.

For consumers, many of the new choices will take months or years to appear. But the big marketing push will be felt everywhere and, in some places, has already started.