Will Offer One-Stop Telecommunications-Equipment Shopping : General Tel Incorporates 1st Subsidiary

General Telephone Co. of California said Tuesday that it has incorporated its first subsidiary, which will offer consumers one-stop shopping for telecommunications equipment ranging from phones to complex private networks.

The new company, GTEL (pronounced gee-tell), is headed by Bernard B. Heiler, a veteran of International Business Machines who joined General Telephone last year as vice president of marketing.

The market for telecommunications equipment was opened to competition in 1980 and, since then, 66 new manufacturers and more than 5,000 resellers have emerged, Heiler said, observing: “We’ve gone from no choice to almost too much choice.” The new company plans to exploit the theme of “one-stop shopping,” he said.

Heiler credited “forward-looking regulatory action” by the California Public Utilities Commission with prompting General Telephone to enter the $10-billion equipment market in a major way. The PUC ruled last July that the company would have to form a subsidiary if it wanted to continue selling and servicing telecommunications equipment.

General Telephone is the first of parent GTE Corp.’s 19 local telephone companies to make the move, said David E. Anderson, General’s president and chief executive. GTEL, which is expected to begin operating July 1, could serve as a prototype for the other GTE companies.

“We wanted our piece of the pie,” Anderson said. “We were already well established in the market with our business sales division and the GTE Phone Mart stores. Still, we felt we could be doing more.”

Only 11% of General Telephone’s $2 billion in revenue last year derived from sales and servicing of so-called customer-premise equipment, but that market is expected to grow 85% over the next five years, Heiler said. The company hopes to expand 250% over that period.

Initially, GTEL will have about 700 employees, most reassigned from its parent, which has 26,000 employees and serves 2.5 million telephone customers, primarily in Southern and Central California.

Heiler said initial marketing efforts will be focused on the 26 GTE Phone Mart stores now in Southern California.

The new company will be based in Thousand Oaks, where its parent is to begin relocating this summer from Santa Monica.