'Baby Bell' teams up with KL firm

'Baby Bell' teams up with KL firm

KUALA LUMPUR (Reuter): One of America's "baby Bells" has
formed a US$1.4 billion joint venture with a new but well-
connected telecommunications company to create multimedia
networks in Malaysia, company executives said yesterday.

US WEST, which runs the former Bell telephone network in the
western United States, is teaming up with Binariang, a company
that has been given a clutch of licenses to launch and operate
Malaysia's first satellites and its first private telephone
network.

"We felt like if we didn't participate in Asia, we were
signing up for a declining market share in the world," US WEST
chairman Richard McCormick said in an interview.

McCormick said US WEST has taken a 20 percent stake in the
joint venture, which is committed to investing 3.5 billion
ringgit ($1.4 billion) over the next three years.

Binariang has been given a license to launch and operate
Malaysia's first two telecommunications satellites. MEASAT I,
built by Hughes Aircraft Company, will be launched in December.

The second, providing backup services and enlarging the
"footprint" to include Australia as well as most of Southeast
Asia and the Indian subcontinent, will be launched in July 1996.

Binariang has also been given licenses to operate a mobile
communications system as well as a telephone line network. It
will operate an international gateway for voice, video and data
lines and provide multimedia networks, including interactive and
information services.

McCormick said the licenses gave US WEST "an extraordinary
opportunity" to penetrate a new market over a broad
telecommunications front.

Binariang emerged last year as the latest venture of Ananda
Krishna, a low-profile businessman with close ties to Prime
Minister Mahathir Mohamad.

Binariang said that by the year 2000 it expects to have over
one million customers, with an annual turnover of four billion
ringgit ($1.6 billion).