Columbia Communications Corp. said today that testing of the new satellite has been completed and commercial use was to start immediately, in time to carry television feeds from the Olympics in Atlanta to all of North America, Europe and North Africa.

The company, which is based in Honolulu and has an office near Washington, leases the satellites from NASA and then sells the use of those satellites to broadcasters and other commercial and government users.

Clifford Laughton, chairman and chief executive of Columbia, said that in addition to arrangements with the space agency, his company also has an agreement with Atlanta-based Crawford Communications Corp. That company is providing a 9.3-meter antenna to feed signals to the satellite.

Columbia purchased the commercial payload capacity of the NASA satellites and is operating the third satellite as Columbia/TDRA AOR-II.

Laughton said in an interview that the satellite's broadcast signals reach from Los Angeles in the West, across North America and out to the eastern end of Eastern Europe.

It will handle a large part of Olympics broadcasting for various television providers, he said.

Columbia Communications has had exclusive contracts with NASA since 1989 to provide domestic, international and maritime communications through space agency-launched satellites, Laughton said.

One of the satellites it uses serves parts of China and elsewhere on the Pacific Rim, Guam, Hawaii and from the West Coast inland as far as Denver.

The second satellite, over the Atlantic, covers from Denver across Western Europe.

The one going into operation today overlaps and covers all of the continental United States and Europe.