Faced with a disappointing lack of home-grown competition, the Americans are moving into the up and coming UK cable TV market with a vengeance, and San Francisco-based Pacific Telesis Group, which is certain to be one of the major players, has announced the receipt of its seventh UK cable television licence and the formation of a new subsidiary to manage its cable interests. The Cable Authority of Great Britain awarded the Derby cable licence to Derbyshire Cablevision, a company owned jointly by Pacific Telesis and Masada UK Cable Partners. The franchise covers approximately 90,000 homes in the city of Derby and brings to nearly 830,000 the number of UK homes Pacific Telesis is now licensed to serve. The corporation has also announced the formation of a new diversified subsidiary called PacTel Cable, which will manage its foreign and domestic cable interests; PacTel Cable will be led by president Tony DiStefano, who was formerly executive director of Corporate Development for PacTel Corp, the parent company of Pactel Cable. Lee Cox, president of PacTel Corp, said that the company currently had applications filed for 11 other UK cable franchises totalling more than 15m homes. Derbyshire Cablevision plans to provide multichannel television as well as the basic telephone service, and construction is expected to begin by the fourth quarter of this year with the system operative by year end. Pacific Telesis entered the UK cable market in December 1988 and now holds six other licences: three in partnership with Masada, and three with Jones Intercable. The licences cover six boroughs in and around the Greater London area, as well as the towns of Norwich, Peterborough and Bolton. Masada Corp is a cable service provider which is more usually to be found operating in US urban markets such as Los Angeles, Phoenix and Atlanta.
