WorldGate services Astound in Cali

By Susan Rush
From The August 29, 2002 Edition Of CED Broadband Direct

Residents in Northern California that subscribe to Astound Broadband's digital service will soon be receiving WorldGate Communications Inc.'s interactive services as part of their basic digital package.

The WorldGate services will be packaged as Astound iTV and offered to customers in Walnut Creek and Concord, Calif. The two companies unveiled their intended partnership in Dec. 2001, and began offering WorldGate iTV services to Astound's St. Cloud, Minn. digital subscribers in earlier this year.

Astound iTV will sport a variety of entertainment content, including weather reports, horoscopes, recipes, sport scores, stock quotes, headline news, entertainment links and interactive games. The package will be available to digital cable subscribers in the area at no additional charge.

Terms of the WorldGate-Astound deal were not disclosed.

Earlier this month, WorldGate introduced Go!TV Links to make every program across all channels instantly interactive. Operators can deploy the service, which is based on WorldGate's Channel HyperLinking technology, to today's digital set-top box converters using their current WorldGate iTV headend equipment.