Date   : Sun, 18 Jan 2009 13:20:54 +0000
From   : pete@... (Pete Turnbull)
Subject: Prestel

On 18/01/2009 12:25, Darren Grant wrote:

> Prestel was never a home thing unless your dad happened to be a senior bank
> executive. And then the idea of letting your kids spend half an hour on it
> at a cost of 5p a min in the evening for a local call would set you back
> ?1.50 expensive in those days. If I recall Prestel was not local unless you
> lived in central London.

> Prestel, isn't "clearly the forerunner of what we do online today" in my
> opinion, it was a niche service almost exclusive to business, nothing like
> the French system that was common in homes.

I don't entirely agree with that.  Certainly by the time Micronet came 
along Prestel was quite popular amongst some users.  Then when the Bank 
of Scotland started their homebanking service they provided low-cost 
terminals, and there was local-call access to the main Prestel servers. 
  There was also 300-baud access with graphics to some of the systems, 
although IIRC that necessitated a call to the geographic (trunk call) 
numbers.

Amongst the computer users I knew in the early 80s using Prestel was at 
least as common as use of BBs.

-- 
Pete                                           Peter Turnbull
                                               Network Manager
                                               University of York