American viewdata aficionados are to get the opportunity to have a look at the Deutsche Bundespost’s Bildschirmtext system, development of which proved such a protracted agony for IBM Deutschland, courtesy of Infonet, the former Computer Sciences Corp subsidiary in which the Bundespost is now a minority shareholder alongside the likes of France Telecom. Bildschirmtext services will be provided via the worldwide Infonet network under an arrangement with Detecon, a subsidiary of the Bundespost, which will have responsibility for implementation and management of the project. With more than 660,000 pages of information and over 320 external computers connected, Bildschirmtext is claimed to be the largest viewda ta system in the world, although France Telecom might dispute that claim in favour of its own Minitel system. There are about 170,000 users in West Germany, and the idea of the link is that US subsidiaries of German companies should use the service for messaging, store and forward applications and access to business information databases, especially electronic mail servic es between West Germany and the US.
