New Service

Comsat Entertainment Group, the nation's largest provider of movies to luxury hotel rooms, has decided to check in to a less pricey market as well.The subsidiary of Bethesda-based Comsat Corp. announced yesterday at a hotel industry convention in New Orleans that its On Command Video unit will introduce a new service called Video On Call to serve mid-priced hotel chains.Like On Command, the Video On Call service to in-room televisions will be provided from a bank of videocassette recorders on the hotel premises, Comsat Entertainment spokesman Paul E. Jacobson said.

Sea-Land Service Inc. has added Baltimore as a port of call on the service to South America that it provides jointly with Transroll, a Brazilian steamship line.When the two lines began the service to Brazil in November, the vessels called on two U.S. ports, Elizabeth, N.J., and Jacksonville, Fla.Baltimore was officially added to the service this week with the arrival Monday night of the Gallant at Seagirt Marine Terminal. The ship unloaded 41 containers and four rail cars.Two weeks earlier, another ship on the joint service called at Baltimore as part of a trial run. That visit apparently went well enough for the lines to add Baltimore as a regular port of call.

AT&T and Domino's Pizza are testing a new service that could revolutionize how consumers obtain a wide variety of goods and services by telephone, from ordering fast food to getting emergency road repairs.The service is a toll-free nationwide telephone number that does not require a caller to dial an area code. Calls are routed to the most convenient branch office or franchisee of a national chain, just as if the caller had dialed the local office directly.The new service seems to have several advantages over widely used "800" numbers, which connect callers to a central bank of telephone operators.

A Columbia software company became at least the 18th Maryland firm to go public since the beginning of last year, as Credit Management Solutions Inc. and its founders sold 2.6 million shares for $11.50 each.The offering left executives of the company owning more than 60 percent of the shares, and valued the firm overall at $82.9 million. The shares rose after Thursday's offering to close yesterday at $13.50.Credit Management sells software that lets consumer lenders automatically check the credit history of prospective borrowers and applies the lender's standard criteria for approving or rejecting loan applications.

Baltic Shipping Co., a Soviet-owned steamship line, has chosen Baltimore as a port of call on its new service between Northern Europe and the United States, the line's agent said yesterday.Richard Shannon, a vice president of Rice, Unruh, Reynolds Co., the Philadelphia-based shipping agency, said details are still sketchy but that Baltimore will definitely be one of the U.S. ports Baltic calls on when it launches the new service in August or September.Baltic provides service between the Soviet Union and the Gulf and Atlantic coasts.

Struggling to distinguish itself in the fierce battle for passengers, USAir will begin offering a more spacious "Business Select" service early next year in 16 cities, including Baltimore.The new service features convertible seats and a moveable cabin divider that slides up and down the aisle. By flipping a lever, flight attendants can convert the usual economy layout -- three seats on either side of the aisle -- into a roomier arrangement with three seats on one side and two on the other.

Cable News Network's stellar performance in Baghdad this week -- it was the network with the most continuous live coverage when the shooting started -- is apparently having an unexpected impact on cable operators back home: a flood of new subscribers.Stephen Burch, area manager of Comcast Cablevision of Maryland, said requests for new service have quadrupled over the past 24 hours. Many callers are specifically asking for CNN, which, as it turns out, is part of Comcast's basic package offering.

The port of Baltimore has been selected as the mid-Atlantic port of call for a new consolidated service by three of the world's largest containership lines.The new service -- combining existing ones offered by Maersk Line, P&O Containers Ltd. and Sea-Land Service Inc. -- would result in weekly service starting in April between Baltimore and ports in the Middle East, the Mediterranean and India, according to the Maryland Port Administration.MPA officials said the inclusion of Sea-Land in the joint venture would, for the first time, give Baltimore a regular American-flagged carrier going to the Middle East.

For cell-phone users who are not entirely happy with their service, this is a good time to think about changing carriers. The holidays and their attendant shopping crush are history. Cell phone service providers have been letting customers take their phone numbers along when they select a new carrier for nearly two months now, and many process bugs have been fixed. So now is the time to seriously consider your wireless phone service. First of all, you need to decide what is good about your current service and what is not so good.

Just in time for the holidays: a new service to set up quick conference calls on the run.As of yesterday, subscribers to US Sprint's long-distance calling card can set up a three-way conference call from any touch-tone telephone, be it in a hotel lobby, airport terminal or shopping mall.Dubbed "QuickConference," the service requires no operato assistance, a feature that distinguishes it from other conferencing services currently available, said Don Goldman, director of messaging and operator services for US Sprint.