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Three of the nation's largest companies have announced that they expect to form a joint venture by early 1993 to provide an array of communications services to more than 1,000 shopping malls.JCPenney, GTE Spacenet Corp. and Capital Cities/ABC plan to launch Advanced Retail Communications in the 1,150 malls that have JCPenney outlets, said Jean Davis, a GTE spokeswoman.That includes JCPenney stores at five Maryland locations, including Security Square Mall in Woodlawn, Lake Forest Mall in Gaithersburg and Valley Mall in Hagerstown.

An end to the eight-day strike against Verizon Communications remained elusive yesterday, with union negotiators at odds over the latest proposal by the telecommunications giant. Union officials said the proposal Sunday failed to address key concerns and were not optimistic that a breakthrough would occur anytime soon. "Tell you the truth, I wouldn't be surprised if it's not over this week," said Maria Bury, president of the Communications Workers of America Local 2100, which represents Verizon workers in the Baltimore area.

The state government's lengthy search for a vendor to supply a new generation of telephone switching equipment is expected to end today when the Board of Public Works votes on a recommendation to award an $11.7 million contract to a subsidiary of GTE Corp.The apparent victory by GTE represents a reversal for Bell Atlantic Meridian Systems, which won the five-year contract in bidding last year only to be disqualified by the Maryland State Board of Contract Appeals. After an appeal by Fujitsu Business Communications Systems, the appeals board ruled in September that the original bidding process was marred by numerous flaws and ordered the state to choose a winner from among the remaining bidders.

The Federal Communications Commission gave its blessing yesterday to Bell Atlantic Corp.'s two-year quest to acquire GTE Corp. in a $65 billion deal that will create the nation's largest local telephone company. The combined company will be called Verizon Communications and will control one-third of the nation's phone lines - amounting to 63 million local phone lines in 31 states and the District of Columbia. In Maryland, Bell Atlantic employs 13,000 people and has 2.8 million customers.

WASHINGTON -- In a decision that further thickens the cloud of controversy over telephone and cable cross-ownership, federal regulators have ordered GTE to end its federally sanctioned experiment to offer state-of-the-art video services in Cerritos, Calif., with Apollo Cablevision.After granting to GTE in 1989 a five-year waiver from federal rules barring a single company from providing cable and phone service in the same community, the Federal Communications Commission rescinded its decision this week.

WASHINGTON -- MCI Communications Corp. is likely to get a higher bid from WorldCom Inc. or GTE Corp. as the companies vie for the No. 2 U.S. long-distance phone provider to offer nationwide telephone, Internet and wireless services on one customer bill, analysts say."MCI is in play," said Jeffrey Kagan, president of Kagan Telecom Associates in Atlanta. "Nobody wants to leave the table without a fight."With billions of dollars at stake, analysts aren't willing to estimate how much either company might raise its bid, although they said GTE has an advantage with its cash offer of $40 a share.

NEW YORK -- Seeking a partner to invigorate its torpid local telephone strategy, AT&T Corp. is discussing a merger with GTE Corp., executives close to the talks said yesterday.A deal to merge the two companies could be worth $48 billion or more and would be the largest corporate takeover in American history, dwarfing WorldCom Inc.'s unsolicited bid of about $30 billion, announced last week, to acquire MCI Communications Corp.AT&T, the nation's largest long-distance telephone carrier, and GTE, one of the biggest local telephone companies, have been discussing a potential merger intermittently for at least a year, according to analysts and executives familiar with the two companies.

NEW YORK -- Adding yet another combatant to the richest corporate takeover battle in U.S. history, GTE Corp., the nation's third largest local telephone company, made an unsolicited offer yesterday to acquire MCI Communications Corp., the nation's No. 2 long-distance carrier, for $28 billion.GTE's all-cash bid came two weeks after Worldcom Inc., an upstart telecommunications provider, offered $30 billion in stock for MCI. That proposal was also unsolicited, and like GTE's offer is meant to overtake a previous agreement by MCI to be acquired by British Telecommunications PLC for about $19 billion in cash and stock.

The Federal Communications Commission gave its blessing yesterday to Bell Atlantic Corp.'s two-year quest to acquire GTE Corp. in a $65 billion deal that will create the nation's largest local telephone company. The combined company will be called Verizon Communications and will control one-third of the nation's phone lines - amounting to 63 million local phone lines in 31 states and the District of Columbia. In Maryland, Bell Atlantic employs 13,000 people and has 2.8 million customers.

Information Resource Engineering, a White Marsh-based manufacturer of communications security products, said yesterday that it has landed a contract that will bolster its role in the emerging market for digital phone equipment.IRE said GTE Government Systems Corp. of Needham Heights, Mass., has signed an agreement designating the Maryland company as its provider of encryption hardware and adapters for the digital switching systems GTE sells to the federal government.The contract is worth as much as $3 million in annual sales, according to IRE.If GTE purchases as much equipment as IRE anticipates, the contract could more than double IRE's revenue of $2.6 million in 1993, the last full year reported.

Striving to rebuild itself to its former glory, defense stalwart General Dynamics Corp. has agreed to pay $1.05 billion in cash for three information technology units of GTE Corp., the companies said yesterday.The McLean, Va.-based General Dynamics is in the midst of a shopping spree that includes a $5 billion deal announced in May to acquire business jet maker Gulfstream Aerospace Corp., as well as failed attempts to buy Newport News Shipbuilding Inc. and, in 1997, United Defense LP.The latest deal is expected to add $1.2 billion a year in revenue to General Dynamics' bottom line, bringing its annual earnings to $9 billion and effectively reversing the dismantling that the company undertook earlier this decade when it faced a shrinking defense marketplace.

WASHINGTON -- Bell Atlantic Corp. won U.S. antitrust clearance yesterday for its $82.4 billion purchase of GTE Corp., overcoming a key hurdle in its bid to form the largest U.S. phone company.Bell Atlantic and GTE, the nation's No. 3 telephone company, secured the Justice Department approval after agreeing to preserve competition by selling wireless service operations in 65 local markets, including Chicago, Houston, Richmond, Va., and Tampa, Fla.The Justice Department said it is one of the largest such divestitures ever required in a merger.

WASHINGTON -- GTE Corp. is suing to block WorldCom Inc.'s proposed $41.8 billion purchase of MCI Communications Corp., claiming the acquisition will hurt long-distance competition and create a company with a "stranglehold" on the Internet.GTE, one of the largest U.S. local phone companies, said the combined WorldCom-MCI will control about half the world's Internet traffic and hurt competition in the U.S. long-distance market. Last year, GTE lost its own bid to buy MCI when WorldCom agreed to pay billions of dollars more.

After more than a month of courtship, telecommunications giants MCI Communications Corp. and WorldCom Inc. announced yesterday that they have agreed to merge. If the $37 billion merger is approved by shareholders and regulators, it will be the largest in U.S. corporate history."We are excited by the remarkable opportunities this combination makes possible for both companies," WorldCom President and Chief Executive Officer Bernard J. Ebbers said at a Manhattan news conference yesterday after the deal was announced.

WASHINGTON -- MCI Communications Corp. is likely to get a higher bid from WorldCom Inc. or GTE Corp. as the companies vie for the No. 2 U.S. long-distance phone provider to offer nationwide telephone, Internet and wireless services on one customer bill, analysts say."MCI is in play," said Jeffrey Kagan, president of Kagan Telecom Associates in Atlanta. "Nobody wants to leave the table without a fight."With billions of dollars at stake, analysts aren't willing to estimate how much either company might raise its bid, although they said GTE has an advantage with its cash offer of $40 a share.

NEW YORK -- Adding yet another combatant to the richest corporate takeover battle in U.S. history, GTE Corp., the nation's third largest local telephone company, made an unsolicited offer yesterday to acquire MCI Communications Corp., the nation's No. 2 long-distance carrier, for $28 billion.GTE's all-cash bid came two weeks after Worldcom Inc., an upstart telecommunications provider, offered $30 billion in stock for MCI. That proposal was also unsolicited, and like GTE's offer is meant to overtake a previous agreement by MCI to be acquired by British Telecommunications PLC for about $19 billion in cash and stock.

Baltimore cellular customers will become the first in the nation to try out a new technology that will let portable phones announce verbally who is calling and give the customer the option of accepting or rerouting the call.GTE Telecommunication Services technology and Bell Atlantic Mobile (BAM) said yesterday that they will begin their test of GTE's Spoken Caller Identification service in February. Baltimore was chosen as the first site because Chesapeake & Potomac Telephone Co. of Maryland's advanced switching system will let cellular customers keep their own numbers, said BAM spokeswoman Karen Ann Kurlander.

AT&TRichard Band of Profitable Investing of Potomac rings bells for American Telephone & Telegraph (T, NYSE, low $30s)."The stock has plunged 35 percent from its December 1989 high. Yet, the company's earnings were actually up for the first half of the year, despite a soft economy. The company also hiked its dividend by 10 percent. AT&T has transformed itself from an old-time utility into a bona fide growth company. This royal blue chip stock should double in price over the next three to five years."

NEW YORK -- Seeking a partner to invigorate its torpid local telephone strategy, AT&T Corp. is discussing a merger with GTE Corp., executives close to the talks said yesterday.A deal to merge the two companies could be worth $48 billion or more and would be the largest corporate takeover in American history, dwarfing WorldCom Inc.'s unsolicited bid of about $30 billion, announced last week, to acquire MCI Communications Corp.AT&T, the nation's largest long-distance telephone carrier, and GTE, one of the biggest local telephone companies, have been discussing a potential merger intermittently for at least a year, according to analysts and executives familiar with the two companies.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- GTE Corp. agreed yesterday to buy Internet-service provider BBN Corp. for $616 million in cash as part of its aggressive push to expand beyond the local phone business.GTE also lined up Cisco Systems Inc. to help manage its network and could buy more than $1 billion of Cisco products over five years. The moves, along with Monday's $485 million purchase of part of Qwest Communications Corp.'s nationwide fiber-optic network, will cause 1997 per-share earnings growth to be "flat to slightly positive," GTE said.