At Micronet we're really talking Launched at the beginning of 1983, Micronet was a Viewdata dial-up service created as a Prestel project of East Midland Allied Press, the publishing and printing group. Micronet had its roots in the purchase of ECC - the publisher of Educational Computing - which brought with it Richard Hease, who was also a partner in modem manufacturer Prism Microproducts. EMAP's Telemap group, as it had become known, subsequently purchased Bob Denton's Prestel magazine Electronics Insight. Denton had previously been associated Tandata's also-failing Prestel service. Hease, who had been given the job of making EMAP's existing, but loss-making, Prestel service work, came up with the idea of a computer user's database, offering telesoftware, news and on-line shopping, and managed to get the backing and investment of both Prestel and the Department of Industry. This came together with Denton's Electronics Insight service to create the new, improved, Micronet 800 in a matter of weeks, with around 3,000 pages initially[source: "London calling", Steve Gold, Popular Computing Weekly, 2nd October 1987, p. 36]. By the time of its fifth birthday in March 1988 - just over a year before this advert - it was up to 50,000 pages, which was nearly a sixth of the whole of Prestel. New subscribers were tailing off though, so Micronet was starting to look for new markets, such as its Bizznet service, with a 4p per hour surcharge. Bizznet also included what Micronet called "teleconferencing" - not in the video sense, but based on the chatrooms that had been pioneered by CompuServe in the US. This was at a time when electronic communications in general were catching on, thanks largely to a surge in the availability of cheap (or at least cheaper) modems. Even Prestel's primitive email system was seeing around 139,000 messages sent each week[source: "Happy Birthday", PCW, February 1988, p. 174-175]. When Prestel first launched in 1979, it already had the inherent ability to send email but the feature was kept largely secret because of political and labour considerations - at the time the nationalised and unionised GPO was running the system and it wanted to protect its postal monopoly. The US Postal Service faced a similar threat, but over there the networks - which included the two biggest, The Source and MicroNET - were private so they just went ahead an implemented email anyway[source: "Uncle Sam's networks", PCW, May 1980, p. 47]. Micronet initially cost £66 per year to subscribe ([[66|1985]] in [[now]]), but was down to £52 a year shortly afterwards[source: "Micronet makes good", Personal Computer News, March 18th 1983, p.2]. It was also subject to hourly phone charges of at least 40p an hour, rising to 60p by 1988 (this was the cheapest rate, available during evenings and weekends), which was nearly £1.50 per hour in 2017 terms. On top of that, there were often pay-per-view charges on content for the wider Prestel - up to a maximum of 50p per frame - although most of Micronet was "free". If nothing else, it was an order of magnitude cheaper than the House of Commons' online information system, launched in early 1981. Although free to parliamentarians, this was also available to the wider masses, as long as they could stump up the £1,990 ([[1990|1981]]) annual subscription and £55 ([[55|1981]]) per hour connection fee[source: "HP source too costly", Personal Computer World, May 1981, p. 55]. By now, subscription was down to £45.80 a year, which combined usage and phone charges of "only" 50p an hour - this was possible as all UK users could now dial up Prestel using local-rate calls. It was also possible to download software from Micronet, with Acorn being an active promoter of Prestel adapters for the BBC Micro for this reason. Twenty-five new programs were added to the library in March 1983 alone, although unlike the other supported computers which had at least 100 programs each, finding copyright-free software for the BBC Micro was proving somewhat harder[source: "Bonus for BBC", Personal Computer News, March 18th 1983, p. 2]. Acorn was selling both add-on adapters and even partnering with spin-off company Torch, which built a whole computer - the Torch Communicator - around a BBC with Prestel. Acorn also launched its own 1000-page Viewdata service in April 1985, containing information on stuff like product news, software, upgrades and dealer locations. It ran on three BBC Micros linked via Econet to a hard disk unit and was available 24 hours a day, seven days a week[source: "Micronet sweetens price rise pill", Personal Computer News, April 20th 1985, p. 1], unlike many data services and bulletin boards of the time which were run by enthusiasts using their parents' phone, so were often only available from 6pm to 6am. By 1987, major software houses were signing deals with Micronet to produce telesoftware for the service. This included Firebird and Code Masters, whose signing-up in November 1987 gave subscribers access to any of their "hot off the press" titles with up to 25% off the usual price of £1.99. There were no immediate plans to sign up more budget software providers, although Micronet was keen to eventually have as many as possible on its books. Firebird's publisher Chris Smith enthused "budget software is an impulse buy and telesoftware is the ideal environment for it. Priced as low as £1.50 on Micronet, Firebird's software is unbeatable"[source: "Micronet sign-up telesoftware deal", POCW, 6th November 1987, p. 4]. When Micronet launched, subsidised networking interfaces comprising an acoustic modem, power pack, cables and software were offered to the first 10,000 subscribers for £49 ([[49|1985]]). In February 1983, adapters were available for the BBC Micro and the Tandy "CoCo", with Spectrum and Dragon versions supposedly becoming available in March[source: "£49 modem widens net", Your Computer, March 1983, p. 31]. Personal Computer News was also reporting in March that the Commodore PET, Apple's I and II and Research Machines' 380Z as well as Tandy's TRS-80 models 1 and 2 could be hooked up. The advert suggests that there were 50,000 Prestel subscribers as at June 1985, of which 20,000 were accounted for by Micronet (at its height)[source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prestel#Public_take-up_of_the_service], whilst the highest number of subscribers Prestel ever had was thought to be about 90,000. Despite the relatively low number of subscribers, Micronet did claim the milestone of being the first Prestel service to register over 1 million accesses in a single month in 1983 - just as three more micros were confirmed as able to connect to the service - the Spectrum (via a Prism VTX 5000 modem), Apple II and TRS-80[source: "Micronet success", Electronics and Computing Monthly, November 1983, p. 13]. Reviewing the VTX5000 in PCN, John Lettice (who would later write for The Register) summed up: ~"if the Prism does the same for other micros, the acoustic modem would certainly seem to be on the way out, and as far as the Spectrum is concerned the VTX5000 represents a giant step. It isn't simply a tool for letting the machine be used with Micronet - it's a route out in to the big wide world and it will at least start the Spectrum off in the direction that micros will be taking through the home information revolution"[source: "The Prism diaries", PCN, September 29 1983, p. 31]. Also available were adapters for Commodore's 64, 500, 700, 3000, 4000, and 8000 machines and some more esoteric micros, like ICL, RAIR, Superbrain, Nascom, NewBrain, Lynx and Osborne. Micronet also won a "Recognition of Information Technology Award", or RITA - a sort of IT Oscar - for Systems Innovation of the Year at the 1984 Which Computer? Show[source: Micronet advert, POCW, 24th May 1984, p. 9]. Despite the relative success of Micronet, Prestel never really caught on. It was sold off by BT in 1994 - the year before that whole "World Wide Web" thing really started to kick off in the UK.