Re: your mail

Matt B. (mattb@DGS.dgsys.com)
Fri, 9 Dec 1994 19:05:05 -0800

>
> On Fri, 9 Dec 1994, Matt B. wrote:
>
> > Targeted marketing will occur, it is a question of critical mass.
> > I was in France for several several years, working with France Telecom's
> > Minitel. Minitel terminals (V.23) transmit full duplex ascii data over a
> > private network of hosts at 75/300 bps, unbelieveably slow and primitive
> > by net standards.
> >
> From the Dec. 94 issue of Byte Magazine pg 130(paraphrased)
>
> A few months ago France introduced an ATM network called CBDS
> (Connectionless Broadband Data Service). Incorporated as France Telecom's
> core network. Beta tested since July. The service offers multiple
> protocals, with interfaces to the Internet, Token Ring, and FDDI (Fiber
> Distributed Data Interface). They are testing private virtual networks at
> 2 to 25Mbps. Companies involved in the project include Hewlett-Packard,
> Dassault, Thomson-CSF, the research group Inria, and FT1.
>
> Warner

That was generally reported in the press. However, the funding to roll-out
new services over this backbone, will be private therefore do not expect
any rollout of minitel over CBDS, rather FT has announce performance
enhancements to the existing V.23 network.

Their are over 11,000,000 million Minitel terminals in existence and FT
has no cost-effective way of bringing these up to todays standards.
BTW, the home PC market in France is very, I repeat very small and is
experiencing exponential growth rates. It will be a long time b4 their is
a critical mass to support new alternative services.

Anyway, these are technical details, and were not the point of my post.

Rather, the point of my post was to look to France telecom's minitel
system as a highly successful example of how marketing can be conducted
over a network. It is also a case study of the acceptance of electronic
commerce on a mass scale achieved despite overwhelming technical
limitations.

We ghave a huge market here, superior technology and lots of marketing
saavy.I think the French case could be used as a consevative growth
baseline model for commercial net ventures.

matt Brosious at NextWave Technologies
mattb@dgsys.com