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Interchange Network is launched

With the June 19 launch of Star Tribune Online, AT&T's Interchange Online Network made available its first consumer service. Star Tribune Online is a service of the Minneapolis/St. Paul Star Tribune newspaper.

Although Interchange's current partners are newspaper and magazine publishers, AT&T is also targeting large corporations that want to develop their own online information services.

Interchange is in discussions with "traditional and n ontraditional publishers" and will offer, among other options, secure buy-and-sell transaction capabilities by year's end, according to an Interchange spokeswoman.

Interchange will compete for content providers against the major existing online services such as Prodigy and CompuServe, as well as the forthcoming Microsoft Network, but will use a very different business model. Interchange won't sell its service directly to users, but will instead provide the interface, data viewing technology, and TCP/IP backbone network for large companies to publish online.

In addition, AT&T also will supply its own content called Interchange Central, which will include national and international news, sports, stock quotes, reference databases and chat forums.

Access Deal
Separately, AT&T announced on June 20 that it has signed an exclusive three-year, $120 million agreement to resell dedicated Internet access services provided by BBN Planet Corp. in Cambridge, Mass.

AT&T says it will offer Internet ac cess at speeds from 56 Kbps to T3 (45 Mbps) in selected cities beginning Aug. 1 and nationwide by Dec. 1.

The company says integrated services digital network (ISDN) service could be available by year's end.

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