[1][2] The company, based in Reston, Virginia, USA, set out to design a pioneering interactive TV service with a set-top box that would allow customers to view video on demand over copper phone wires.
At the time, Bell Atlantic CEO Ray Smith stated, "Before the communications industry is through, your computer will speak, your TV will listen, and your telephone will show you pictures."
Tele-TV was originally intended to feed programming content to the video systems the Baby Bells were planning in the early 1990s, but the venture lost much of its Bell company support when the 1996 Telecommunications Act distracted them with the possibility of a much more lucrative revenue stream - long-distance service.
The design and identity of the Tele-TV service was completed by 1996 - creative director Morgan Almeida and executive producer Peter Stonier had led global teams (English & Pockett, Pittard Sullivan Fitzgerald, PmCD ) to brand the service and design graphical user interfaces for interactive program guides.
However, the project was impacted by technical challenges, increasing costs, and unanticipated market changes - primarily that the Internet took off faster than fiber-optic TV systems—and so the three Baby Bells shut the venture down.