Videotex in Europe Conference Proce!Edings
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ORGANISED BY THE COMMISSION OF THE EUROPEAN COMMUNITIES Videotex in Europe Conference ProcE!edings Edited by Carlo Vernimb and William Skyvington With a preface by Georges Anderla Learned Information Oxford and New York Videotex in Europe I ' ; v· : -;:· Proceedings of th~ • ~ideotex 1n Europe ~ Conference Luxembourg 19-20 July 1979 Organ1sed by the COMMISSION OF THE EUROPEAN COMMUNITIES Edited by Carlo Vernimb and William Skyvington ' ~ ~ ~ With a preface by Georges Anderla (Learned Information 1980 Oxford and New York ', \\ ·J Videotex in Europe © ECSC, EEC, EAEC, Brussels and Luxembourg, 1980 All rights reserved ISBN 0 904933 22 9 Published by Learned Information (Europe) Ltd. Learned Information Besselsleigh Road The Anderson House Abingdon Stokes Road Oxford OX1 3 6 EF Medford, N.J. 08055 England U.S.A. (~co:Y) - tYI · (. :;r.,{ IV Contents Page PREFACE Mr. G. Anderla, Director - Information Management (CEC Directorate General XIII) v1i EDITORS' NOTE 1x OPENING OF THE CONFERENCE Mr. R.K. Appleyard, D1rector General- Sc1ent1f1c and Techn1callnformat1on and Information Management (CEC Directorate General XIII) INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDIES Mr. C. Vern1mb, Co-ordmator - New Information Technologies (CEC Directorate General XIII) 3 TERMINOLOGY 5 LECTURE: "Videotex Development in the Community" Mr. M. Kohn, (Telesystemes, Pans) 7 TEXT: "Videotex/Euronet Compatibility" [summanzed extracts from the study report] (Telesystemes, Pans) 22 LECTURE: "Videotex Development outside the Community" Mr. R. Woolfe (Butler, Cox & Partners, London) 44 DISCUSSION - Session No. 1 51 LECTURE: "Videotex Market in the Community" Mr. H.D. Scholz (Pactel, Frankfurt) 63 TEXT: "Videotex Market and Display Study" [summaned extracts from the study report] (PA Management Consultants, Frankfurt) 75 LECTURE: "Market for Videotex Business Terminals" Mr. R. Barnes ( MWS Serv1ces, London) 89 LECTURE: "Standards for Text Communication" Mr. H. McGregor Ross (Data Systems Consultants, London) 105 TEXT: "Character Sets for Communication of Text" [summanzed extracts from the study report] (Data Systems Consultants, London) 111 v LECTURE: "Technological Environment" Mr. M. Roetter (A. D. Little, Paris) 126 TEXT: "Videotex - Competitive and Complementary Technologies" [summarized extracts from the study report) (A. D. L1ttle, Pans) 135 LECTURE: "Videotex Display and Information Access' Mr. I. Mclaren (PA Des1gn Un1t, London) 178 DISCUSSION - Session No. 2 188 SECOND DAY OF THE CONFERENCE Mr. G. Anderla, D1rector - Information Management (CEC Directorate General XIII) 201 RECAPITULATION Mr. T. Sommerlatte (A.D. Little, W1esbaden) 204 FRAMEWORK FOR FUTURE DISCUSSION Mr. K.M. S1mpson (PA International, London) 206 DISCUSSION - Session No. 3 208 CONFERENCE CONCLUSIONS Mr. G. Anderla 235 LIST OF PARTICIPANTS 239 VI PREFACE Mr. G. Anderla, Director, Information Management, CEC Directorate General XIII On the 13th February 1980, in Strasbourg, Europe launched her data-transmission network called Euronet Diane. And Madame Simone Veil, President of the European Parliament, described this first Community effort in the telematics domain as a major step towards the creation of a "Common Market of Information". The existence of the present book proves that the Commission of the European Communities is interested in the related field of domestic telematics referred to as videotex ... which is in fact a European-invented technology. The proceedings of the Luxembourg conference on videotex, last summer, are presented here in a most readable form. I should simply like to add a few words concerning the circumstances in which the Commission might be prepared to become involved, concretely, in videotex development. In pragmatic terms, the Commission would be interested in examining the possibilities of collaborating in telematics pilot projects that satisfy the following eight criteria: 1 - Pilot projects should be directed towards selective applications of new technologies which meet the require ments of new groups of users in the fields of scientific, technical, economic and social information. Alternatively, pilot projects might aim at supplying new higher-quality services to existing user groups. 2. They should show a positive cost/efficiency balance as regards specific market segments. 3. They should relate to a Community-wide field of applica tion beyond the scope of any single nation. 4. They should involve a contractual agreement between the nine PTT administrations, and ensure the gradual adoption (as and when they arise) of standards.". which will in turn constitute a strong factor in the promotion of Euro pean industry, permitting the creation of a tangible market. 5. They should facilitate the blending of two or more tech nologies of European origin, and preferably combine at least a new telematics technology with an advanced information processing technology. \'11 6. They should be sufficiently small-scale to be undertaken with limited resources (budget, staff), whilst being so important as to serve as a model for promoters of larger scale self-financing projects. 7. They should, at the outset, involve only a few partners, so that they can come to voluntary agreements ... but they should nevertheless involve a sufficiently broad cross section of the parties concerned. 8. They should fit into a completion schedule of two to five years' duration, compatible with the budget of the third Action Plan. I am convinced that this book will be a rich source of ideas and inspiration for everybody in Europe concerned with telematics in general, and videotex in particular. Vlll EDITORS' NOTE Several different kinds of source material have been juxtaposed in this book, which is primarily a transcription of practically everything that was said at the two-day conference on the subject of videotex organized in Luxembourg on 19-20 June 1979 by the Commission of the European Communities. Certain sections of these proceedings are labeled LECTURE or TEXT ... and we would like to explain to the reader the sense of these headings. Many months before the scheduled date of the conference, the Commission asked a number of consulting firms to carry out studies on various specific aspects of videotex. This meant that the Commission was able to offer each of the seventy or so participants at the conference an impressive pile of printed documents weighing several kilogrammes: namely, the six study reports produced by these firms. Members of the consulting firms came to the Luxembourg conference in order to present their reports, and each of their verbal presentations has been included in our book under the heading of LECTURE. As far as the printed study reports themselves are concerned, it was out of the question to reproduce their entire contents in the present book, so we have adopted the solution of extracts and summaries, each of which appears here under the heading of TEXT, straight after the corresponding LECTURE. As editors of these proceedings, our intention has been to reproduce as faithfully and completely as possible the essential aspects of this important encounter between European experts and authorities concerned by videotex. We hope that possible distortions due to language translation, tape recording and summarization are not excessive. We might add that the book, of course, can hardly re-create what was perhaps the most interesting encounter of all at the conference: a simultaneous demonstration - for the first time in the world - of four of the most widely known videotex systems, namely, Britain's Viewdata (Prestel), France's Antiope (Teletel), Germany's Bildschirmtext and Canada's Telidon. Carlo Vernimb and William Skyvington Luxembourg, November 1979 lX X OPENING OF THE CONFERENCE Mr. R. K. Appleyard, Director General, Scientific and Technical Information and Information Management, CEC Directorate General XIII Ladies and gentlemen, you would perhaps like some explanations of why the EEC is interested in videotex. Well, today, all of us here are increasingly part of one economic entity based on a common market. It's an entity which is poor in energy and raw materials, but rich in brains and inventiveness. Within this economic entity, the specific commodity of information seems certain to play a greater and greater rBle in the coming years and decades. And indeed information is a very fortunate commodity in which to deal, because it's unique - I think - in that its value is increased by trade in it and by its use, whereas for most of the hardware commodities the value diminishes. So we feel, those of us who work in the EEC, that we have a duty to look at the information market and industry of the nine countries,. and to look in particular to the openness and transparency of this market which- let's be quite clear about it - also represents an advantage worth gaining for all of you. Indeed, in the long run, it's probably both an economic and a political necessity. So we're concerned with all the problems of trans-border, trans-language, trans-system movement of information, and especially with the practical obstacles to these, as well as with the bigger principles of openness and non-selective access to these big new instruments which must be forged, in the first instance, by the public authorities. And we can by no means divorce an open common market for information from the question of a common market for the technology and the instruments which carry it. Those of us who have had to buy TV sets in Belgium and Luxembourg, and pay the current prices, certainly do not want a repetition of the Pal/Secam affair. The stakes are certainly important. If I was to try to summarize the significance of what we are talking about in one phrase, I would cite what an American contributor said in a conference a couple of weeks ago. The advance towards the information society has been astronomical, he said. In 1969 there were 14,000 terminals; today there are two million, and estimates give ten million in 1989. But there are already 130 million television sets in the US which are potentially part of the interactive information network of the future.