Meantime US West Inc announced yesterday that it is committed to spending at least $750m over the next two years building its information superhighway infrastructure. The Englewood, Colorado-based Baby Bell has construction under way in Omaha, Nebraska and will begin building links to Denver; to Minneapolis-St Paul; Portland, Oregon; and Boise, Idaho. It expects to add about 10 more cities to its superhighway construction list by mid-year and grow the list to 20 cities by year-end. The Mountain States Baby Bell says it plans to file with the Federal Communications Commission for permission to build multimedia network facilities in neighbourhoods that include about 330,000 homes and businesses in Denver, 292,000 homes and businesses in Minneapolis-St Paul, 132,000 homes and businesses in Portland. US West was an early pursuer of convergence between telephone and cable television services, investing $2,500m for a 25% stake in Time Warner Inc’s cable interests last September. It confirmed to the Wall Street Journal that it was also interested in an alliance with Cablevision Systems Corp, which has 2.1m subscribers, and said it was close to completing the terms for another big cable deal. It wants to be able to deliver interactive services to more than 750,000 homes by the end of 1995, adding 500,000 homes annually thereafter. The trial in Omaha, with 2,500 customers and using Digital Equipment Corp Alpha-based servers, and set-top boxes using technology from 3DO Co..pl 63
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