By Mike Mills
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 14, 1995; Page B12

It's crunch time in Gucci Gulch. Denied their preferred modes of operation -- the power lunch, the cocktail reception, the golf game, the personal visit -- some lobbyists have only the fax machine as they fight for last-minute changes in a huge telecommunications bill.

Congressional aides are holed up in offices, working on draft compromise language that they fax back and forth. Frequently the language is leaked to industry lobbyists within minutes, aides say. The lobbyists then write unsolicited critiques of the drafts and fax them back to the staff.

Most often, it's wasted effort -- the staff already has rewritten the provision several times over by the time the critiques come in. But if the lobbyists are lucky, the staff will read the comments and maybe even adopt them wholesale.

So go the lobbying wars as Congress nears completion of the broadest rewrite of communications laws since 1934, in the golden age of radio. Both chambers have passed versions of the bill; now the job is to reach language that both can agree on.

However the details work out, the legislation stands to affect every aspect of the way people communicate. It would let telephone, cable and long-distance companies enter each other's industries. It would allow most cable operators to set rates as they please, with little federal intervention. It would give media companies new freedom to buy each other out and would attempt to allow parents to keep their kids away from smut on the Internet and violence on television.

Most observers say the odds are 50-50, and sliding every day, that Congress will finish the legislation this year. Members remain divided over two key issues: the rules for phone service competition and for media company expansion.

As the clock ticks, lobbyists wander the halls outside the official negotiating sessions, which change locations frequently. But many find it increasingly difficult to get the attention of the small group of House and Senate staff members who are in the know.

"At this point in the process the access is very limited," said Aubrey Sarvis, a top lobbyist for Bell Atlantic Corp. "It's the nature of the game. If you're a staffer, you can't be meeting with lawyers or lobbyists every hour."

Staffers weren't being complete hermits, however. House and Senate aides mingled with network lobbyists and the cast of the hit TV show "Frasier" at a party Friday hosted by NBC President Bob Wright. Yesterday, House Republicans proposed provisions that would allow the networks to own stations reaching more than 35 percent of all households. Rupert Murdoch's Fox network also won a special provision, potentially allowing Fox to keep control of contested stations that it owns.

Meanwhile, ads continue in newspapers and on TV. Public advocacy groups, feeling locked out of the process, try to plant stories they hope will help their causes. And Internet users critical of curbs on sexual content in the bill on Tuesday organized a shower of phone calls, faxes and e-mail messages to the offices of conferees.

On the issue of phone competition, it's largely a battle of semantics: What word best describes a sufficient level of competition that a local Bell carrier must face before it can offer long distance service?

A year ago the phrase was "actual and demonstrable," but the seven regional Bells killed last year's legislation because they found those words too strong. This year the House tried to require them to face competition from a rival offering "comparable" local service, but the Bells protested that too.

Rep. Jack Fields (R-Tex.) last week proposed requiring "meaningful competition" and even "fungible" competition. But that spurred a last-minute assault by the Bells, including calls from Bell Atlantic Chairman Raymond Smith. Hill aides say the result was a letter from Senate Majority Leader Robert J. Dole (R-Kan.) to House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) demanding the language not appear in the final bill. "Thank you in advance," Dole wrote.

The search for the right words continues. "We're going to have to get an Oxford English Dictionary," sighed one long-distance lobbyist.

Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Larry Pressler (R-S.D.) gives the award for Most Tenacious Lobbyists to the alarm monitoring industry. "The alarm folks are tireless over near the Senate floor," he said.

Having already won a provision keeping the Bells from entering the business for five years, the alarm industry is gunning to remove an exemption from that rule won by regional Bell company Ameritech Corp., which last year purchased two alarm companies. To counter the alarm industry's omnipresence, Ameritech keeps two of its own lobbyists nearby.

Alarm industry lobbyist Bill Signer said he has to be persistent to counteract what he calls Ameritech's superior access. "If the president of Ameritech calls you up, you're going to answer the phone," he said. "This is the only way we have" to reach members.

For his part, Ameritech chief executive Dick Notebaert says he has indeed talked to lawmakers to counter the alarm industry's assault. But he lamented the drawn-out process. "We need a bill," he said. "Let's get on with this."