GTE Corp has agreed to form a joint venture with the Soviet Union Ministry of Communications to build and operate an international digital telephone and facsimile service for Moscow: the now Sovintel venture will initially be available to hotels and businesses from November, using microwave and satellite; it will cost between $5m and $10m to get it going, with GTE Spacenet putting up most of the money, and will add 240 international circuits to the 550 presently available from the whole of the Soviet Union; the project was conceived by San Francisco/Moscow Teleport Inc, which was unable to put up enough capital for more than a small shareholding.
