Re: UKNM: free pc

[Peter Beech]

Sean Phelan wrote:


> France Telecom distributed millions of Minitel terminals and operated

> the portal sites ( le 11, 3615, etc) and the billing system. It is/was

> very close to the Freeserve model, in that the network charges are

> bundled into the per-minute call charges.


Interesting analogy, but not exactly equitable. France Telecom used their

monopoly power to subsidise the introduction of proprietary hardware into the

protected French telecoms market (and it still is to a large extent),

generate revenue from premium rate per minute and drop call charges that they

then split with content providers.


It worked, where Prestel didn't in this country, because they gave away the

kit needed to receive the services.


> Of course, they took the truly visionary approach of paying the content

> providers a substantial revenue share, and that part was all automated

> and was built in to the billing system.


Minitel effectively scuppered the development of Audiotex services in France

(monopoly and forced distribution again) and has been a major reason that the

French market has, by Northern European standards, been slow to adopt the

Internet (and yes, I know about the language barriers)


> There were a large number of government and academic studies right up

> to the mid 90s that tried to assess whether the whole exercise had been

> profitable for France Telecom and for France Inc.  The conclusions were

> usually that is was marginally profitable if you excluded externalities

> like employment, social good, education, etc., and very profitable if

> you include them.


French protectionism - nothing else.


> But I don't expect Dixons to give away the PCs to get the call minutes!!


Nope, coz thet're not a monopoly state-owned PTT with a social remit!


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Peter Beech

Managing Director

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