France Telecom is claiming further steps in the development of Integrated Services Digital Networking, with the demonstration of a range of services at the Sicob computer fair in Paris. France Telecom claims to the lead the world in ISDN, saying its system can use the France’s existing telephone lines unmodified, adding that more than 70% of the country’s main telephone exchanges are now fully computerised. On a system developed with Apple Computer Inc, France Telecom sent a high-definition picture between computers in under a minute, taking up 350Kb of computer memory; the company claims that on a traditional telephone line, the transmission would have taken an hour. As the picture was being transmitted, a phone conversation was held on the same line, while a display on the telephone showed how much the call would cost, and whether another caller was trying to reach the user. The company says a subscription to Numeris, the name of the French ISDN services development project, would be twice the price of a normal line: the special phones required to use the system cost around 175F-, $26, a month. France Telecom has signed partnerships with 29 computer vendors to further the development of the network; a further 60 agreements are in the pipeline. In addition to Apple, ICL France announced such a partnership at the fair, and IBM France demonstrated software that links its a range of its machines into Numeris services.
