Prestel was the brand name of a videotex service launched in the UK in 1979 by Post Office Telecommunications, a division of the British Post Office. It had around 95,500 attached terminals at its peak, and was a forerunner of the internet-based online services developed in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Prestel was discontinued in 1994 and its assets sold by British Telecom to a company consortium.
A subscriber to Prestel used an adapted TV set with a keypad or keyboard, a dedicated terminal, or a microcomputer to interact with a central database via an ordinary phoneline. Prestel offered hundreds of thousands of pages of general and specialised information, ranging from consumer advice to financial data, as well as services such as home banking, online shopping, travel booking, telesoftware, and messaging.
In September 1982, to mark Information Technology Year, the Royal Mail issued two commemorative stamps, one of which featured a Prestel TV set and keyboard. In April 1984, British Telecom won a Queen's Award for Technological Achievement for the development of Prestel.
History Invention and development In 1970, Samuel Fedida, a research engineer who had worked at English Electric and a US consultancy company, joined the Post Office as head of the Computer Applications Research Division. Within a year, he had completed the initial design of a viewdata system (the generic term in use at the time) for the general public: it would comprise information stored on a central computer accessed over the public phone network using modified televisions as terminals. By early 1973, the Post Office had decided to develop an experimental system, and was working with the BBC, the Independent Broadcasting Authority, and standards organisations to develop compatible standards for teletext and viewdata. During 1974, it decided to commercialise the viewdata concept.
Pilot trial The first public demonstration of viewdata took place in London in 1975 during Eurocomp, the European Computing Conference on Communications Networks, where Fedida presented a paper on the technology and the potential appeal, as the Post Office saw it, of a public interactive information service.
Further demonstrations followed, and based on the favourable reactions of TV manufacturers and potential providers of information and services, the Post Office decided to run a pilot trial. It also agreed with potential information providers (IPs) that it would not select IPs or exert editorial control over what they put on the system.
The two-year pilot service began in January 1976. By mid-1977, IPs included the Consumers' Association, the British Farm Produce Council, British Rail, London Transport, the Open University, the London Stock Exchange, the Institute for Scientific Information, and National Giro. Interviewed by The Times, Fedida was quoted as saying that the Post Office saw viewdata playing several roles: as a "centralised information source", an "intelligent interface" to specialised scientific and technical data, a "communication machine" for passing messages, a personal information store, a new information distribution medium, a "channel for education in the home", and as providing an "advanced calculator service".
Test service After some delay, the Post Office launched a test service of Prestel, as it was now called, in October 1978. At the end of December, there were 95,500 information pages, growing at a rate of 3,500 per week, and just over 300 users, increasing by 3050 per week.
Commercial launch
In March 1979, the Post Office opened a limited "London Residential Service" for subscribers in the capital. The full commercial service launched in September 1979; the director of Prestel stated that there were over 130,000 pages in the database and 1363 "sets" connected to the system at the start of that month.
By February 1980, there were 131 IPs and 116 sub-IPs. The Post Office categorised the IPs as follows: national and local newspaper groups; magazine and other publishing groups; central government departments, and other agencies (such as the British Tourist Authority and the British Library); nationalised industries (including British Airways, Sealink, and British Rail), and companies in other fields of business, such as banks and travel agencies; new companies set up to exploit the viewdata medium, and those expanding from an existing base of online services, such as Reuters; associations; software companies; and miscellaneous.
Particularly popular were the travel-oriented nationalised industries; new companies, such as Fintel; and the Consumers' Association. Overall, popular topics included games, quizzes, jokes, and horoscopes; the Stock Market, company information, and business news; travel and holiday information; national news, sports, and "What's On" locally; cars; and consumer advice. This was reflected in advertisements for Prestel.
Writing in the winter 1980/81 issue of British Telecom Journal, Prestel's public relations manager stated there were over 7,500 sets attached to the system, 170,000 frames in use, and more than 400 IPs and sub-IPs. By the end of 1981, according to Butler Cox, a management consultancy, Prestel had 2,000 residential and 11,000 business users, with 14,000 "terminals" in use. The service was within local call reach of 62% of phone subscribers in Britain. IPs numbered 153, with 593 sub-IPs. Users accessed 190,000 frames per day, and the average time on the system, for each user per day, was 9 minutes. There were 193,000 frames available, including 2,000 response frames.
Prestel Gateway March 1982 saw the launch of the Prestel Gateway service. This enabled users to connect, via the Prestel network, to external computers operated by IPs or other companies. Travel agents, for example, used Gateway to connect to tour operators' systems and make reservations.
User charges At the launch of the commercial service in September 1979, and in addition to phone charges, users were charged 3p per minute online to Prestel from 8 am to 6 pm Monday to Friday, and 3p for three minutes at other times. Installing a phone jack-socket cost £13, with a quarterly rental of 50p. Business users paid an additional standing charge (i.e., a flat charge regardless of usage) of £12 per quarter.
By October 1982, the online usage charge had risen to 5p per minute (8 am to 6 pm Monday to Friday and also 8 am to 1 pm on Saturdays, free at other times), the business standing charge to £15 per quarter, residential users now paid £5 per quarter, and jack installation cost "from £15", with a 15p quarterly rental fee.
Growth From September 1986, under page *656#, Prestel's publicity department published a "Factframe" showing, at the end of each month, the average number of terminals attached and the respective percentages in businesses and in homes; the number of frames available and the number of frame accesses per week; and the number of messages sent per week.An example from 1987: Actual subscriber figures were not published; Thomas et al. (1992) suggest these were "significantly less" than the number of terminals, as "businesses were assumed to 'attach' more than one terminal", and note that British Telecom stopped publishing figures at the end of 1988.
In September 1982, The Times reported there were 18,000 users, of whom 3,000 were residential. Noting that British Telecom had originally forecast 50,000 users at this point, the report went on to outline a new approach to attracting them, quoting senior managers from British Telecom and the head of a joint venture. The plans involved the introduction of a home banking service; the marketing of a Prestel adaptor for computer terminals to the business and higher education sectors; and the launch of Micronet 800, a service for microcomputer users.
Six months later, in February 1983, the same newspaper recorded 22,400 users, of whom 15% were residential, writing that the future of Prestel "could be in doubt by 1985 if it is not approaching profitability."
In mid-1984, the UK Department of Trade and Industry issued a booklet stating that the availability of travel information, the launch of Micronet 800, and the provision nationwide of the messaging service, Mailbox, had contributed to a rise to 45,000 attached terminals by June of that year. 61% were in businesses, and 39% in homes. In that month, on average, the Prestel database contained 320,000 frames that were accessed 14.6 million times. 17 Prestel Gateways to external computers were in operation. For July, the Butler Cox consultancy recorded 47,000 users (60% business, 40% residential), and a total of 1,200 IPs and sub-IPs.
In December 1984, Prestel's general manager stated that there were 50,000 subscribers. Reviewing the lessons learnt since the start of the service in 1979, he noted that "An 'all things to all people' approach didn't work and had to be replaced by a system of interactive services targeted at specific markets", and that in his view, "The parameters that have stood the test of time are user-friendliness, low cost, use of existing telephone networks, and the inexpensive alphamosaic format."
In mid-1985, The Times stated there were 53,000 "terminals, adapted televisions, microcomputers or specially designed units" attached to Prestel, with residential users now accounting for 45% of the total. In the reporter's view, this represented "a change of fortune for [a service] deemed commercially dubious by many commentators." The figure of 65,000 was reached at the beginning of 1986about a third were Micronet 800 subscribers. Prestel had reportedly traded at a profit from the previous October onwards. Commenting in September 1986 on what it referred to as "only 70,000 users ... growing at a rate of ... a few hundred customers a week", The Times declared that Prestel "had failed to live up to expectations", comparing it unfavourably to the French Teletel videotex service and to British Telecom's own Telecom Gold electronic mail service. Earlier in the year, The Guardian had also praised Teletel, asking "Can Prestel be improved or should we just scrap it and start again?", and questioning whether a scrolling, text-based system, such as CompuServe's, was in any case preferred by most consumers over page- and graphics-orientated videotex services.
Writing in The Guardian just before Christmas 1988, Jack Schofield reported that Prestel "had become reclusive" about user numbers, with the Factframe, "[a]fter prompting, ... finally updated this summer ... claim[ing] 90,000 users", while the figure of "only 75,000" was being quoted by the British Telecom manager responsible for the service. In January 1989, drawing on what turned out to be the final Factframe, published at the end of 1988, Schofield wrote that "After ten years, [Prestel] has yet to achieve the number of users it expected to get in its first year", quoting a figure of 95,460 terminals attached. This was the highest figure claimed during the lifetime of Prestel.
Decline