Path: utzoo!mnetor!tmsoft!torsqnt!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!uunet!bu.edu!telecom-request From: adamg@world.std.com (Adam M Gaffin) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Nynex Gateway Bites the Dust Message-ID: <74664@bu.edu.bu.edu> Date: 13 Feb 91 03:25:50 GMT Sender: news@bu.edu.bu.edu Organization: The World Lines: 72 Approved: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 11, Issue 114, Message 1 of 10 {Middlesex News}, Framingham, Mass., 2/12/91 By Adam Gaffin NEWS STAFF WRITER Nynex Corp. said yesterday (Monday) it will pull the plug on a computer information service that has lost several million dollars. The company says judicial restrictions on its ability to provide information, coupled with the Northeast's declining economy, made it impossible for its Info-Look gateway service to succeed. It will seek regulatory approval to end the service by May 10, spokeswoman Janine Mudge said yesterday. Ratepayers will ultimately pay for the losses, but Nynex spokeswoman Janine Mudge said the impact on Massachusetts residents will be relatively small, because Info-Look was launched here only last year, a year after it began in New York, and two years after its debut in Vermont. Karen Nelson, who follows the online industry for Link Resources Inc. in New York, estimated total losses of $5 million to $10 million. Info-Look offered computer users access to dozens of information and entertainment services, everything from airline reservations to an electronic version of {USA Today}. Mudge said that although more than 12,000 people called into Info-Look, only 3,000 used it on a regular basis. She said the system was extremely confusing for users, because each information provider had its own set of keyboard commands. She blamed this on on a ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Harold Green that bars regional phone companies from directly providing online information to consumers - even something as simple as this. Greene is currently re-evaluating his ban. Richard Koch, who had to fold his own Citinet online service last summer because of losses incurred through the Nynex gateway, said he agreed the constraints imposed by the court made success difficult, but added it was interesting that Nynex decided to cancel the service at this point. Mudge, however, said the issue was finances, not Greene. At least two other regional phone companies have abandoned similar services after heavy losses over the past 18 months. Nelson said Greene's original intent was to keep phone companies from establishing information monopolies while letting them establish information ``gateways.'' He based his model on the French Minitel system, in which the government phone company provides access to hundreds of information and entertainment services. But the French phone system was able to impose standards on providers so that users could navigate the service easily, she said. It also gave away or sold at low cost millions of simple terminals. Nelson said she felt Nynex could have done more to convince information providers to agree on a common interface and promote the service. Koch said the online industry is still far from a viable mass medium. ``It's easier to look in a newspaper right now for information,'' he said. ``It's much easier right now to just watch CNN.'' He said providers are still simply throwing services at users, rather than trying to figure out what they really want. Similar phone audiotex systems have fared much better, in part because they are far easier to use, Nelson said, adding that while virtually every home has a telephone, only about one in four have a computer.