telecom@eecs.nwu.edu (TELECOM Moderator) (07/30/89)
On Friday, Judge Greene gave AT&T the green light to start selling their own information services products, effective August 24. Readers will recall that I alluded to this some time ago in the Digest, saying that it was only a matter of days before AT&T would be given permission to begin their own information services network. Although AT&T has not yet announced the exact components of the new offering, knowledgeable insiders tell me that it will quickly evolve into a service which combines many of the best features of Dow Jones News Retrieval and Compuserve. It will offer the standard fare of news, stock reports, travel reservations, games, newsletters and SIGS. We also know at this point that in addition to frequent meetings with Dow Jones, AT&T has been talking to Nintendo, the game people. We also know that AT&T Mail will provide the email function for the new service when it gets underway this fall. Although AT&T has carefully avoided any discussion (which has reached my snooping ears!) regards pricing, the word is it will definitly provide some stiff competition for Compuserve, Genie, and Plink. One of the nicer parts of the new service will be its convenience in use. I'm told there will be no special sign up required except for having an AT&T Calling Card, the Pin on which will serve as your login i.d. Charges will be billed to your AT&T account, meaning they will come right on the phone bill if AT&T is presently billing you that way. As soon as I hear more, I'll post another message. The competition among the Information Providers should become fierce this fall once AT&T gets their thing going. I'm excited about it, and plan to try it out as soon as it becomes available this fall. August 24 is the day they can begin officially offering it; I'd expect things to begin falling in place during September. Patrick Townson
WANCHO@wsmr-simtel20.army.mil (Frank J. Wancho) (07/30/89)
> I'm told there will be no special sign up required except for > having an AT&T Calling Card, the Pin on which will serve as your > login i.d. Oh, I hope not. Considering that many card numbers are based on your phone number, and the only thing which attempts to protect it is your PIN, you may very well be giving away the farm if this is true and if login IDs are conventionally public knowledge... --Frank
peter@uunet.uu.net (08/02/89)
I can see wholesale abuse of the system if your user id is your calling card number. New subject... Regarding railroad phone systems... some railroads _still_ run voice and code over fencing. Doing SCADA over these lines is... um... interesting. --- Peter da Silva, Xenix Support, Ferranti International Controls Corporation. Business: peter@ficc.uu.net, +1 713 274 5180. | "The sentence I am now Personal: peter@sugar.hackercorp.com. `-_-' | writing is the sentence Quote: Have you hugged your wolf today? 'U` | you are now reading"