Tci

The tape-recorded voice on the telephone thanks me for my patience. What patience? The voice must be confusing me with somebody else, somebody whose TCI cable TV service actually works, this being two weeks since Hurricane Floyd, this also being more than a week since all BGE power has been returned, this being long enough that power has been restored in parts of Taiwan, so what's the problem in Baltimore?But the voice on the TCI line thanks me for my patience, because this is what it has been programmed to do. It's the modern way. You pick up a telephone, which is a machine, and you dial a number that connects you not to a human being but to another machine, a machine that placates you with false flattery, and this is what we call progress.

Most Thomas Jefferson Elementary School pupils may not grow up to be famous musicians, but officials at VH1 music television and TCI Communications of Baltimore want them to at least have a chance.In an hourlong program yesterday that featured a local jazz artist, Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend and a fifth-grader who played "Hot Cross Buns," VH1 and TCI officials donated equipment worth $25,000 to the western Baltimore school and announced a total of $75,000 in contributions to three other city schools.

Nearly 41,000 customers of Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. were beginning their fifth day without power this morning as the utility scrambled to deal with what it described as unprecedented damage from last week's visit of Hurricane Floyd."

The swap of cable-television markets between Comcast Corp. and AT&T Corp. stands to revamp the way Baltimore consumers get television, telephone and Internet service.If the deal goes through as planned, it could end TCI Communications' tenure as the city's cable provider. The transaction faces a difficult regulatory review, however.Comcast Corp., the Baltimore area's largest cable company with 300,000 customers in Howard, Harford and Baltimore counties, apparently would take over cable service in the city.

Little more than a month after the end of federal regulation of cable rates, TCI Communications of Baltimore, the city's cable company, said yesterday it would raise the price for expanded basic service, the most popular choice, 6 percent next month.Customers who receive TCI's expanded basic package will see their bills increase from $28.93 to $30.66 a month, not including premium channels and other charges.TCI also said it would boost the price of basic cable, which includes broadcast network stations and a few additional channels, 2.7 percent, from $11.22 per month to $11.52 a month.

AFTER American Telephone & Telegraph Co. was broken up in 1984, it struggled to redefine itself. The nation's largest long-distance company was challenged by new rivals, stymied by rapid technological change and haunted by its own poor strategic decisions.Now, under Chairman and Chief Executive Officer C. Michael Armstrong, AT&T Corp. is waging a comeback, entering new markets through partnerships with such firms as British Telecommunications PLC and through acquisitions of companies like local telephone provider Teleport Communications Group Inc. (TCG)

WASHINGTON -- The federal government took a big step toward redefining the Internet yesterday when the Justice Department approved the proposed $31.8 billion acquisition of the cable giant Tele-Communications Inc. by AT&T.The deal, announced in June, cannot be closed without the consent of the Federal Communications Commission, whose officials said yesterday that the agency's staff was more than a month away from finishing its review under different standards and laws from those considered by the Justice Department.

IN THE WAKE of the AT&T-TCI $31.7 billion merger deal, AT&T's stock has dropped as investors worry about the costs the telephone giant will incur to upgrade TCI's cable systems and uncertainty over whether those costs can reasonably be charged to consumers. Is this a good deal? Will the merger go through?Jeffrey KaganTelecom industry analyst, Kagan Telecom Associates, AtlantaFirst of all, the merger will happen. It is what AT&T needed to do. But it is a question of what will happen if the stock keeps dropping.

NEW YORK -- AT&T Corp. shares continued to drop yesterday, touching a seven-month low, as investors question whether the largest U.S. long-distance phone company's $43 billion purchase of Tele-Communications Inc. will succeed.AT&T fell $1.88, to $54.88, in trading of 13.6 million shares, making AT&T the fifth-most-active U.S. stock. AT&T shares have fallen 16 percent since June 23, the day before the TCI acquisition was announced.AT&T has failed to convince investors that TCI is the company's answer to getting into the $100 billion-a-year U.S. local phone market.

There's only one real problem with the Internet -- getting connected to it.For most computer users, that means using a modem to dial up another computer a few miles away that's directly attached to the Net via a high-speed communication line.Those few miles might as well be a thousand, because the phone lines that connect you to that big, fast Internet computer are too slow to bring you all the information waiting out there for you. Until somebody does something about this, you'll grow old watching graphics-laden Web pages trickle onto your screen.