[ih] GOSIP & compliance

[Olivier MJ Crépin-Leblond]

I remember reading this historical perspective and it was pretty accurate.

I could add a couple of first hand experiences with France Telecom, 
Minitel, Transpac and VTCOM.

In 1997 I had a meeting with top level executives of France Telecom, 
Transpac and VTCOM, discussing an Internet project. All the way then, 
the suited people I had in front of me, then a young postgraduate, were 
obviously very proud of the Minitel's success. I would say, too proud, 
to the extent that they were completely blinded by it - and as a 
Frenchman, I can say that it's sometimes a trait that we have in France 
- national pride, for better or for worse.

In this case, it was for worse. I told them the Minitel was on life 
support, based on a technology that was developed in the 70s. I knew 
everything about its limitations, including its intended evolution 
through Broadband ISDN - B-ISDN, which was also going to be a non 
starter due to its lack of flexibility and top down control. But that 
fell on deaf ears: Transpac was France's National Pride, a stable 
network running on X.25. VTCOM was the main supplier/controller of 
content - serving millions of paying customers. Why would they need to 
look at anything else than their pride and joy? I told them Transpac was 
on its last legs due to its inability to support faster transfer speeds. 
And top down control of all content was not scalable. The Internet was 
the future. A decentralised network where everyone could produce 
content. The laughter around the room was not hidden. "With the Minitel 
we make a lot of money because people pay for their services. How is 
your... Internet ever going to make money, when its services are free? 
Nobody has ever made any money giving things away for free. You are 
living in a dream world. An anglo saxon dream world. Not everyone speaks 
English, you know?"
After an hour and fifteen minutes, I was promptly kicked out of their 
office. They weren't disrespectful, but didn't hide the fact that they 
had a strategy and it definitely wasn't mine.
I won't share the names, but these were added to a long long list of 
people suffering the Peter principle that I have met in my life.

Kindest regards,

Olivier
(with apologies for answering an old thread - I have been very busy am 
just catching up)

On 20/03/2022 19:53, Ole Jacobsen via Internet-history wrote:
> For some historical perspective: In 1994 we published an article about Minitel
> in ConneXions--The Interoperability Report. It's the first article in the April
> issue. The entire archive of ConneXions is available from the Charles Babbage
> Institute, but for easy access to this particular issue I've uploaded a copy
> to my directory on Yikes.
>
> See:
>
> https://www.yikes.com/~ole/store/ConneXions8-04_Apr1994.pdf  <https://www.yikes.com/~ole/store/ConneXions8-04_Apr1994.pdf>
>
> Ole
>
>> On Mar 20, 2022, at 09:45, Bob Purvy via Internet-history<internet-history at elists.isoc.org>  wrote:
>>
>> Well, don't people in France ever want to look up numbers in Germany,
>> England, and Italy?
>>
>> 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.
>>
>> On Sun, Mar 20, 2022 at 9:41 AM John Levine<johnl at iecc.com>  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
>>>
> Ole J. Jacobsen
> Editor and Publisher
> The Internet Protocol Journal
> Office: +1 415-550-9433
> Cell:   +1 415-370-4628
> Web: protocoljournal.org
> E-mail:olejacobsen at me.com
> E-mail:ole at protocoljournal.org
> Skype: organdemo
>
>
>

-- 
Olivier MJ Crépin-Leblond, PhD
http://www.gih.com/ocl.html