RE: UKNM: free pc

[Sean Phelan]

Well, a variant of it worked in France in the 80s.


France Telecom distributed millions of Minitel terminals and operated

the portal sites ( le 11, 3615, etc) and the billing system. It is/was

very close to the Freeserve model, in that the network charges are

bundled into the per-minute call charges.


Of course, they took the truly visionary approach of paying the content

providers a substantial revenue share, and that part was all automated

and was built in to the billing system.


There were a large number of government and academic studies right up

to the mid 90s that tried to assess whether the whole exercise had been

profitable for France Telecom and for France Inc.  The conclusions were

usually that is was marginally profitable if you excluded externalities

like employment, social good, education, etc., and very profitable if

you include them.


But I don't expect Dixons to give away the PCs to get the call minutes!!


Cheers

Sean



>URL at http://www.free-pc.com they claim they'll have shipped 10,000

>Compaq machines within the next few months.

>

>Question...could this work in the UK and is this one of those US ideas

>that are 18 months to two years ahead of the UK?

>

>Leslie

>___________________________________________________________

>Leslie Bunder, technology writer, Teletext on the Web

>

e-mail: LBunderteletext [dot] co [dot] uk (work) or lesliebunder [dot] com (home)

>web: http://www.teletext.co.uk

>tel:  0171 386 3667 (inside UK) or +44 171 386 3667 (outside UK)

>mobile: 07010 701967 (inside UK)  or +44 7010 701967 (outside UK)

>

>> -----Original Message-----

>

> From: Giles Turnbull [SMTP:giles_turnbullpa [dot] press [dot] net]

>> Sent:	08 February 1999 15:01

>

> To: 'uk-netmarketingchinwag [dot] com'

>> Subject:	UKNM: free pc

>>

>> Who said banners suck? Not just them - Free PC will give people a PC

>> for

>> nowt, as long as they don't mind media-rich ads being played round

>> their

>> desktop as they, um, work.

>>

>> story filched from cnet:

>> http://www.news.com/News/Item/0,4,32087,00.html?st.ne.fd.mdh

>>

>> -Giles


=============================================================

Sean Phelan

seanmultimap [dot] com

     http://www.multimap.com

phone (within UK): 0171 433 0460      fax (UK): 0171 209 5194

phone (Int'l):  +44 171 433 0460      fax:   +44 171 209 5194


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