The quest for international partnerships continued in the summer as AT&T Corp. announced a US$10 billion joint-venture plan with British Telecommunications plc to more strongly position itself in the global market.
AT&T and BT on 26 July said they agreed to pool their international operations and form a new company to provide telecom services to multinational corporate clients.
The deal follows recent moves by AT&T in the United States to position itself in domestic local markets. In June, AT&T announced its proposed US$48 billion acquisition of cable TV giant Tele-Communications Inc. AT&T also agreed to buy Teleport Communications Group Inc., which provides local-loop services to businesses.
The companies said they plan to combine their trans-border network investment programs and adopt a new common network architecture-based on Internet Protocol technology-for the venture.