[ih] GOSIP & compliance

[Francesco Fondelli]

 In Italy we had Videotel, similar to Minitel. I never had a Videotel
terminal (was expensive and yes paid by the minute) but in the 90s you
could connect with a V.23/V.21 (?) modem to ITAPAC (X.25 network) and
somehow access some of the Videotel services (at local per-call-rate... 200
lire IIRC).

I think Videotel main app was... chat.

Still have the phone numbers of some ITAPAC "gateway"...

ciao

On Sun, Mar 20, 2022 at 9:05 PM Bob Purvy via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> > It apparently made France Telecom a lot of money since users paid
> by the minute, but I think they were kind of embarrassed by the whole
> thing.
>
> I believe we now have a corollary to the theorem:
>
> *'Strategic' means you don't make any money.*
>
>
> It's:
>
> * If you're making money, it's not strategic.*
>
>
> On Sun, Mar 20, 2022 at 10:45 AM John R. Levine <johnl at iecc.com> wrote:
>
> > > Well, don't people in France ever want to look up numbers in Germany,
> > > England, and Italy?
> >
> > Perhaps, but historically the way that worked is that each national telco
> > had operators in a room full of out of date foreign phone books.  I doubt
> > any of the telcos would have found that compelling.
> >
> > > Also, there were lots of other apps on top of Minitel, including a
> dating
> > > service! It did replace calls for directory assistance, but then people
> > > discovered it could do a lot of other things, too.
> >
> > Yes, I know.  In our 1995 Internet Secrets, we had a chapter on Minitel
> > Rose.  It apparently made France Telecom a lot of money since users paid
> > by the minute, but I think they were kind of embarassed by the whole
> > thing.
> >
> > It is a reasonable question why other PTTs didn't just clone Minitel, but
> > I don't think at the time there would have been much incentive to hook
> > them together.  Apparently they did trials in Belgium and Ireland, but
> > without the PTT subsidy to provide the terminals for free, they didn't go
> > anywhere.
> >
> > Regards,
> > John Levine, johnl at taugh.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for
> > Dummies",
> > Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail.
> https://jl.ly
> >
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