Data-Tel Video-Text Inc., a Costa Mesa company...

Data-Tel Video-Text Inc., a Costa Mesa company that plans to market its “intelligent” telephone system throughout Southern California and a dozen major metropolitan areas next month, said it will become a public company through a reverse stock acquisition with an investment firm. Data-Tel will be “bought” by Pali Technology in Newport Beach, but Data-Tel’s owners will end up with nearly 85% of the stock of the surviving company, said Marlan C. Matson, Data-Tel’s founder and president. The reverse acquisition, expected to close Sept. 27, will allow the privately held Data-Tel to be transformed into a public company more quickly and more cheaply than it could through an initial public offering. Matson said Data-Tel has been developing a communications network for the last six years that would allow customers to use a video display terminal with a telephone handset to gain access to video text information bases that also would be part of the Data-Tel system. A key feature in the product is a device that will allow the user to talk and get printed information from any video-text service, except those with Commodore brand technology.