U.S. to Ease Rules on Phone Access to Cuba : Communications: The FCC is expected to act quickly to implement the State Department’s call for easing restrictions. Cuba will reap millions in hard currency.

WASHINGTON â€”  The State Department is urging federal regulators to ease restrictions on telephone calls to and from Cuba--a shift that would provide Havana with an important new source of hard currency for the first time since U.S. economic sanctions were imposed in 1961.

A Federal Communications Commission spokeswoman said the agency’s interim chairman, James H. Quello, had not read the State Department’s letter. But the FCC is expected to move quickly to allow U.S. phone carriers to compete in providing service to Cuba, according to State Department and FCC officials.

The result is likely to be a lot more calling between Cuba and the United States. Since Cuba and most foreign countries charge seven times the cost of completing an international call, Cuba stands to reap millions of dollars annually because fewer calls will be routed through third-party nations. Right now, it’s possible to call the United States from Cuba, but calls are routed expensively through Italy.

The push to make it easier for Cubans to reach out and touch someone is an outgrowth of the Cuban Democracy Act of 1992. The measure was signed into law by former President George Bush and is being implemented by the Clinton Administration.

While the law generally tightens the U.S. economic embargo against Cuba, it authorizes “telecommunications services facilities . . . in such quantity and of such quality as may be necessary to provide efficient and adequate telecommunications services between the United States and Cuba.�

In a statement released late Friday, AT&T; said it “believes the State Department policy is fair and equitable to all long-distance carriers. . . . This policy will allow AT&T; to provide a level of service to Cuba that is comparable to the service AT&T; provides to other countries.�

The improved service and additional money will be welcomed in Cuba. Since the breakup of the former Soviet Union, the Caribbean island nation has lost billions of dollars in aid from its former benefactors in Moscow, putting a big crimp in its economy.

But the payments will likely add modestly to the $4-billion annual shortfall that international telephone calls already contribute to the U.S. trade deficit. A more relaxed phone policy would also encourage more Americans to call Cuba, contributing to the U.S. telephone payment deficit.

Improved service also would affect Canadian-based long-distance telephone resellers who now do brisk business routing calls--mainly from Cuban exiles in the United States--through Canada to Cuba. One such firm reportedly charges as much as $23 per three-minute phone call and bills its customers through their credit cards, according to Treasury officials who have been investigating such firms for possible violations of U.S. laws.

In the last 25 years, the number of telephone lines in service in Cuba has doubled to more than 300,000, according to Cuban government statistics.

In an attempt to alleviate the communications congestion, AT&T; three years ago substituted a larger-capacity telephone cable for an over-taxed radio transmitter used to relay calls over the airwaves between Cuba and the United States since 1987.

But Cuba would not agree to activate the cable unless the U.S. released about $80 million in previously collected telephone charges that had been held during the economic embargo. As a result, the volume of calls has remained severely restricted.