By Mike Mills
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, November 3, 1998; Page E1

Peace agreements have been brokered in the Middle East and Northern Ireland, so why is it that the five-year impasse over putting up wireless communications antennas in Rock Creek Park hasn't been resolved?

Bell Atlantic Mobile, which wants to improve cellular phone reception in one of the nation's largest urban parks, has made some headway recently. But company officials privately concede that residents living near the park and opponents in the National Park Service are far from exhausting their options to keep approval at bay.

Rock Creek Park is a huge dead zone for most cellular signals. The National Park Police and the Road Runners Club of America agree with Bell Atlantic Mobile that better coverage along the parkway would improve road and recreational safety.

To fill in many of the dead spots, Bell Atlantic Mobile wants to put up two antennas, one at the 80-foot mark of an existing 100-foot light pole on the park's William H.G. Fitzgerald Tennis Center at 16th and Kennedy streets NW. The other antenna, a 120-to-150-foot monopole, would be disguised as a pine tree near a Rock Creek maintenance facility, according to the company's latest proposal.

"Neither of these facilities are areas one thinks of as parkland, though they certainly are on park property," said Bell Atlantic Mobile spokeswoman Audrey Schaefer. "We are doing everything we possibly can to submit responsible proposals that are consistent with enjoyment of the park."

But residents near the tennis center, still upset about the stadium being located there, have an arm-long litany of worries about the tower. Unsightliness is one. Harm from radio waves to humans, animals, even foliage, is another, despite industry assurances that the transmissions are safe.

"We really need to be more aware of all that's going on, how it will affect people health-wise and happiness-wise," said Loretta Carter Hanes, a 72-year-old resident whose apartment in the Shepherd Park neighborhood overlooks Rock Creek.

The National Park Service recently ordered Bell Atlantic to pay $25,000 for part one of a three-stage environmental assessment -- the bills for parts two and three will be delivered shortly. The company has hired SAIC Corp., whose area offices are in McLean, to complete its study by next spring.

The survey will consider the antennas' effect on scenery, migratory birds and safety -- more people, after all, would be yakking and driving on the curvy, low-speed parkway. It will explore alternative locations and technologies such as campus-style emergency phones. And it will determine whether an even more detailed federal environmental study is warranted, a park official said.

Last month, a five-foot-round blue helium balloon floated over the stadium for four days. Bell Atlantic Mobile used it to take photos of various places where the balloon was visible, and now it's using the photos to develop computer simulations of how the antenna would look on the stadium.

Bell Atlantic Mobile officials said they needed the balloon to be up only for a day. But the Park Service required it to fly for four, to give residents a lingering look at the proposed antenna site.

Why aren't the area's other major wireless carriers -- AT&T Corp., Cellular One, Nextel Corp. and Sprint PCS -- involved? Because they're letting Bell Atlantic slug it out, hoping to "co-locate" their antennas on Bell Atlantic's sites once approval is granted.

That's exactly what worries some park officials. "There's a real concern that a number of companies will come after Bell Atlantic," said an official who asked not to be identified.

Information on the Rock Creek issue resides on the Park Service Web site (www.nps.gov/rocr).

AMERICAN MOBILE SATELLITE CORP. of Reston is steering away from the maritime industry, another step toward its goal of focusing exclusively on the landlubber market for people with wireless data needs.

The company, which operates a single satellite covering North America, last week handed off its marine services business to Canadian sales agent Stratos Global Corp. in a four-year deal valued at $8.5 million.

Stratos will be the exclusive distributor of AMSC's Skycell business, which consists of around 3,000 customers -- about half of whom are in the yachting business. The move is one of several taken by AMSC to pull out of a financial tailspin that threatened to sink the company a year ago.

AT&T CHAIRMAN C. MICHAEL ARMSTRONG, in Washington yesterday to speak to the cable TV industry, lashed out at America Online Corp. of Dulles and others he said wanted a "free ride" on the cable network that AT&T will own if its purchase of Tele-Communications Inc. is approved by regulators.

Last week several companies, including AOL, GTE Corp. and MCI WorldCom Inc., asked the Federal Communications Commission to insist that AT&T-TCI lease parts of its cable network so that competitors can resell high-speed Internet access under their brand names. Similar resale arrangements to competitors are required of local telephone companies.

AT&T officials have said such a requirement would scuttle the TCI deal. Armstrong said "no company will invest billions of dollars" to upgrade cable lines for high-speed Internet services if competitors can get access to the network without paying additional charges. TCI has a 26 percent stake in At Home, a high-speed Internet access and information service for cable systems.

Armstrong said AT&T would continue TCI's policy of letting AOL and other Internet content companies provide service to their customers over cable's high-speed lines. But those customers also would be paying for and receiving At Home's rival information content.