General Motors Corp’s Hughes Aircraft wants to expand its Spaceway satellite communications project into a global, $3,200m system. Hughes amended its original application with the US Federal Communications Commission for the data, video and voice communications system for the US, which has an estimated value of $660m, in an effort to pre-empt the grandiose $9,000m system with 840 satellites, called Teledisc and backed by Bill Gates. Hughes is in Commission-supervised talks with Teledisc representatives and other applicants that want to use the same frequencies. Teledisc plans to start service in 2001. Spaceway originally planned to start service in the US market by 1998, but its amended filing proposes to use nine satellites and deploy them by the year 2,000.
