TELECOMMUNICATIONS

Mexican Phone Firms to Form Alliance: Alestra, owned by AT&T; Corp. and Mexican industrial giant Grupo Industrial Alfa, and Unicom, a partnership between GTE Corp. and Mexican and Spanish firms, said in a statement that the two recently formed companies have agreed to negotiate an alliance. The partnership seeks to “join forces and investment plans,” said the companies, which both won concessions last December to enter Mexico’s long-distance telephone market when Telefonos de Mexico’s monopoly ends Jan. 1, 1997. Analysts said AT&T;’s dominance in the long-distance market and GTE’s strength in local service will give the combined entity huge power to break into TelMex’s market. Alestra, which will be the name of the planned new company, said it will keep plans to invest $1 billion over the next five years in building a digital transmission network.