BOSTON (AP) — A proposal filed by NYNEX Corp. could give Massachusetts residents in 10 communities their first taste of choice in cable television providers.

NYNEX, New England’s regional telephone company, asked the Federal Communications Commission on Friday for approval to begin carrying cable programming on its telephone lines.

NYNEX wants to carry between 400 and 800 channels — including those offering movies on demand, and home banking and shopping services — to parts of Boston, Somerville, Revere, Winthrop, Brookline, Cambridge, Watertown, Peabody, Salem and Marblehead. Service could begin in mid-1995.

The new cable system would link 330,000 NYNEX customers in Massachusetts and 60,000 in Rhode Island in a network that the company has said would cost about $500 million. The network would travel along much of the 270,000 miles of fiber optic lines that the company already has laid in Massachusetts.

The proposal comes four days after Bell Atlantic Corp. became the first of the regional “Baby Bell” telephone companies to win FCC approval to offer cable service. All seven regional Bells are expected to ask for permission to offer cable service, and cable companies are expected to offer telephone service, as the rules that kept the two separate are dismantled.

Under provisions of the federal Cable Act of 1984, NYNEX would not be able to own the programming offered over its network and would be required to open the network to any company that wanted to air a show, NYNEX spokesman John Johnson told The Boston Globe. That legislation is now being contested in courts and in Congress.

Three New York cable companies have already said they want to offer programming over a NYNEX system in Massachusetts. The three are Liberty Cable Television, CAI Wireless Systems and Urban Cable Systems.

The FCC is responsible for approving the rates NYNEX would charge subscribers and providers. State regulators also would continue to monitor NYNEX telephone rates.

NYNEX filed suit last year in Portland, Maine, to overturn portions of the federal Cable Act that prevent it from offering its own cable programming in the region where it provides phone service.