[ih] GOSIP & compliance

[Carsten Bormann]

On 2022-03-20, at 14:15, vinton cerf via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> 
> While developing MCI-Mail, I tried to get Minitel to agree to interconnect
> to allow email exchange but they refused.
> this would have been around 1984.

Between 1983 and 1987 I spent quite some energy connecting to the German “Bildschirmtext” (Btx) system [1], the German PRESTEL copycat (equivalent of Minitel).
They had the concept of an “externer Rechner” (external server) that was connected to the core Bildschirmtext system that was developed by IBM.
The “externer Rechner” (ER) connected to Bildschirmtext via X.25 (which was the part that I worked on), and, since OSI wasn’t ready, used German pre-standard higher-layer protocols called “einheitliche höhere Kommunikationsprotokolle” (EHKP4 to EHKP6, using the OSI model layer numbers).  The EHKP implementers sat next door, so I have only hearsay, but it must have been grueling work to get this stuff going, all with various IBM components roaring in the background (we once had a S/36 in the next office).

The basic idea was that as the provider of an “externer Rechner” you could provide “Mehrwertdienste”, which could have included e-mail service — as long as you provided a clunky TV-style user interface (24x40 character ISO 6937 plus DRCS (*) in color!) through the EHKP stack.  (The access modems the participants used were V.23 asynchronous 1200 bit/s down, 75 bit/s up, and used CEPT T/CD 06-01 [2].)  
The provider of an externer Rechner could charge DEM 0.01 to 9.99 per page requested (or also levy a per minute charge), which would have provided for a revenue model.

Note that this required a “Staatsvertrag” between the (then 10+1) German federal states to satisfy the complex legal environment, which also limited the selection of equipment you could use.  The established players tried to make sure the homologation(*) requirements were as onerous as possible (to fend off competition), so there was some wrestling until we finally could connect our “externe Rechner”.  Connection also wasn’t cheap (starting with the need to get expensive “Datex-P” (X.25) service).  On the consumer side, while you could do some banking over Btx via ER, the overall usefulness was rather limited so the Btx service never grew to reach even 1 % of the population before it became a sidecar to Internet access.

Grüße, Carsten

[1]: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bildschirmtext
[2]: https://www.etsi.org/deliver/etsi_i_ets/300001_300099/300072/01_60/ets_300072e01p.pdf
(*) DRCS = dynamically redefinable character set [2]
(*) (Getting through that homologation process was also the first time my naïve young self encountered openly corrupt state officials in oh-so-clean Germany, but that is a different story.)