France Telecom and IBM were set to unveil a deal that calls for IBM to help upgrade Minitel, the French electronic commerce network.
Sources said an announcement was scheduled to occur after the close of trading Tuesday on the Paris bourse, at which officials of France Telecom will appear along with Louis Gerstner, chairman and chief executive of International Business Machines.
Further details were not immediately available. Representatives at IBM and at France Telecom in the United States declined to comment. Officials at the parent France Telecom were not immediately available to comment.
However, a US online industry consultant noted that IBM has worked closely with Minitel for years, although the system has also relied heavily on French computer firms such as Group Bull for computer services and equipment.
The Minitel, a teletext terminal connected to the French telephone network, was something of a forerunner to the commercial Internet. It grew rapidly in the 1980s because it was simple to install and use. Its popularity soared after a government giveaway of special terminals required to access the system.
At last count, Minitel had roughly 17 million users. The system has evolved into a labyrinth of 25,000 databases containing a wealth of services like phone directories, train schedules, weather reports, and bill-payment schemes. The Minitel network functions essentially as a closed loop of databases.
Due largely to the success of Minitel in France, the country has been slow among European nations to welcome the Internet. But despite Minitel's antiquated database navigation software, it has retained a wide following among consumers who value the system for its electronic bill-payment features, an electronic commerce capability that has been slow to develop on the Internet due to security and privacy concerns.
Over the years, improved versions of the Minitel appliances, which accept payments via smartcards, have been sold commercially through France Telecom retail outlets.
Francophones have also favored the older French-language system of Minitel menus over Internet browsers, where English is the lingua franca.
Recently, however, French business and political leaders have been seeking to counter this technological isolation. Seeing that the rest of the world has quickly moved to embrace the Web, the French are taking new steps to ensure they won't get lost in the shuffle.
Copyright© 1998 Reuters Limited.
