General Motors Corp has belatedly woken up to the possibilities of combining the marketing of cellular telephone service with the sale of its cars, and its Hughes Aircraft Co subsidiary has teamed up with Alcatel NV on digital network equipment. It intends to offer dual standard phones that will work both on existing analogue and next generation Time Division Multiple Access digital cellular networks, and has lined up a string of cellular operators to create a virtual GM Network – those that will participate in their cellular regions include Bell Atlantic Corp, GTE Corp and McCaw Cellular Communications Inc, with others to be signed – with the benefit that General Motors auto dealers will resell their air time.
