The Bell Atlantic Video Services arm of Bell Atlantic Corp and Oracle Systems Corp duly announced their plans for joint development and marketing of interactive multimedia software and services last night, with Bell Atlantic will use Oracle’s database management software as the basis of its interactive programming and home shopping service, now called Stargazer, but there was still no formal announcement that British Telecommunications Plc is another customer for the Oracle system; Bell Atlantic said it will begin offering the Stargazer services in a test market this spring, pending regulatory approval, and leading directly to commercial deployment of on-demand interactive services later this year; the two companies will also offer their software and services to other telecommunications and cable companies, running on the massively parallel computers developed by nCube Corp, Foster City, California; Oracle has rewritten and expanded its software to accommodate video, audio and text, creating the Oracle Media Server, to be launched formally next Tuesday, January 18.
