Telecommunications

Dave Parke figured one of the benefits of federal telecommunications reform would be competition in the cable television business and lower rates at his Westchester home. But Parke is still waiting, as are millions of other cable customers across the country. "My monthly bill went from $42 last year to $56 for the same package of channels," said Parke, who subscribes to Continental Cablevision. "We went back to the basic service, for $29."

This is a preliminary list of corporate executives planning to attend this year's highly coveted Sun Valley Conference, where media moguls and other corporate bigwigs rub shoulders, ride the rapids and often wind up making the biggest of the big entertainment deals. Allegheny & Western Energy Corp., John G. McMillian, chairman Amelior Foundation, Raymond G. Chambers, chairman America Online Inc., Steve Case, chairman and CEO Archer-Daniels-Midland Co., Dwayne O.

About this time last year, Michael Eisner, Warren Buffett and Tom Murphy had a chance meeting in a parking lot at the power retreat for entertainment big shots held every year by investment banker Herbert J. Allen Jr. in Sun Valley, Idaho. The conversation resulted weeks later in the largest corporate merger in entertainment history--Disney's $19-billion purchase of Capital Cities/ABC.

Only about one in every 100 people in Africa has a telephone, but that hasn't stopped one Connecticut company from finding big success in selling cellular systems there. While many U.S. phone companies have focused in recent years on Asia and South America as growing cellular areas, Telecel International Ltd. quietly tapped the cellular market in Africa over the last 10 years. It now operates systems in five African nations and plans to expand to four more within the next year.

For cable TV executives, the destruction-from-above scenario of "Independence Day" must seem all too familiar. During the last two years, while struggling to upgrade and extend their aging networks, cable companies have watched as direct-broadcast satellite television captured more than 2.7 million customers. Thanks to its ability to beam 175 digital channels into every home in the country without digging trenches or stringing cable, DBS threatens to render the cable industry all but obsolete.

In its quest to make the personal computer an indispensable tool, Intel Corp. on Monday unveiled software that will make it easy to place long-distance phone calls over the Internet. The Intel Internet Phone software is the first to allow users of different types of computers and software to link up, solving a problem that has held back use of the global computer network for long-distance telephone calls, even though it would save long-distance toll charges.

MCI Communications Corp. on Monday launched an aggressive pitch for its consumer Internet access service after being stung by the interest AT&T Corp. has generated for its new connection to the global data network. Although MCI has offered Internet access to consumers for more than a year, it has barely promoted it, and analysts believe MCI has signed up fewer than 50,000 customers at home.

The Morningside retirement community has been chosen for a six-month study being conducted jointly by USC's gerontology and communications departments. The study will measure the effects online communication has on Morningside residents' sense of self-worth, involvement in the community, feelings of loneliness and isolation, and other issues related to mental health, researchers said.

Acting on one of the most divisive issues of telecommunications reform, the Clinton administration on Friday urged federal regulators to promote universal telephone service by barring phone companies from disconnecting low-income customers' local phone service for overdue long-distance bills. The administration also asked the Federal Communications Commission to pass rules making subsidized telephone service more readily available to the poor and to people in rural areas.