patrick@chinet.chi.il.us (Patrick A. Townson) (07/30/89)
Judge Greene issued an order Friday giving AT&T a green light to start a national information retrieval service. Under the order, they are free to begin providing such services on August 24. AT&T has been in negotiations with Dow Jones for some time on this matter, and most of the technical problems have been resolved. Basically, everyone was just waiting for Judge Greene to deliver himself of the ruling. The new service will greatly resemble Compuserve and Dow Jones News Retrieval, with a combination of the best features of each, including news and financial reports, home shopping, games, email via the existing AT&T Mail Service, telex and more. Travel reservations, personal banking with coopating banks and other features will be added. My understanding is that no sign up or special effort must be made to use the service. Your AT&T credit card will serve for billing purposes, and charges will come right on your phone bill. It will be accessible by a local phone call. I expect they will also be brokering system resources for folks who want to publish and distribute electronic newsletters, etc. This has to be one of the best things yet to come from divestiture. -- Patrick Townson patrick@chinet.chi.il.us / ptownson@bu-cs.bu.edu / US Mail: 60690-1570 FIDO: 115/743 / AT&T Mail: 529-6378 (!ptownson) / MCI Mail: 222-4956