Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!mcsun!inria!geocub!farinas
From: farinas@geocub.greco-prog.fr (Luis Farinas)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: FCC doing it again...
Message-ID: <1537@geocub.greco-prog.fr>
Date: 7 Dec 89 21:38:41 GMT
References: <1989Dec2.070734.3853@stb.uu.net> <532@galadriel.bt.co.uk>
Reply-To: farinas@geocub.greco-prog.fr (Luis Farinas)
Organization: Greco-Programmation, Bordeaux, France.
Lines: 18

>the french handed some free terminals..
COmpletely right.
You can get a free terminal (called minitel in France) from the French
administration to replace your paper phone book.
The minitel is now widely used in France by everybody to make
Plane and train reservations, to buy things from different stores, to
get information on quite any subject (meteo, holydays, cars,...).
The minitel is a 75/1200 bauds terminal. 
But there is a particularity in the French system; these minitels
are always used to call special numbers which will connect the user
to the TRANSPAC system, which is completely devoted to computers
communication.
In fact, computers and human voices are using different nets.
(Of course, you can connect two computers using standard numbers
but it's much more expensive; TRANSPAC is quite cheap).
In fact, it would be long to explain the whole thing, but it is a
great succes  (financially) for the French telecom. (BTW, the phone 
company is a state company in France).