[ih] GOSIP & compliance

[Brian E Carpenter]

On 21-Mar-22 07:56, John Day via Internet-history wrote:
> I believe that was more the excuse to justify building it and putting it in every subscriber. The other uses was part of the plan all along. In fact, the plan was that everything that today would be the Web would be owned by the PTT. It was railing against that that got Pouzin in trouble.

To add context, that was exactly the time in history when the PTT monopolies were under very strong attack in Europe, as the impact of deregulation in the USA sank in. Also, Pekka Tarjanne (head of the ITU) was pushing very hard against the monopolies. Certainly France Telecom was digging in its heels against de-monopolisation, and against value added services from 3rd parties. Minitel was a tool in that battle and was also touted as a matter of national pride. Connectionless networks and 3rd-party packet switching were viewed (correctly) as a massive economic threat by France Telecom and all the other monopolies. (That's why their doctrine was OSI/X.25 and not OSI/CLNP.)

But I think the main point about Minitel was that it only existed because it was massively subsidised by a government monopoly. Economically, it was nonsense. In most West European countries at that time, this was a no-no, especially as the monopolies began to fall.

     Brian

> 
>> On Mar 20, 2022, at 12:41, John Levine via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>>
>> It appears that Bob Purvy via Internet-history <bpurvy at gmail.com> said:
>>> One still wonders why the other European PTTs didn't do their own and
>>> interoperate with Minitel. Too much NIH?
>>
>> Remember that the business case for Minitel was that it would replace
>> paper phone books and directory assistance operators.  Everything else
>> was an add-on.  You didn't need to interoperate to do that.
>>
>> R's,
>> John
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>