France Telecom’s packet-switching subsidiary Transpac SA has signed its first national D-channel ISDN user in a contract worth approximately $35m, the company announced last week. La Francaise des Jeux, the national lottery and sweepstakes company, is in the process of replacing analogue lines with digital, D-channel connections for all of its 13,800 gaming locations throughout the country, said Transpac. The Paris region is completed. The rest should be done by the end of the year, it said. The digital real-time connections to Transpac’s X25 network transmit players’ choices to the gaming company’s information centre near Marseilles will reduce its transmission costs, she said. The Channel D connection is less expensive than the specialised [analogue] connection when the transmission rate is between 1,200bps and 9,600bps. Over 9,600bps, they are equivalent,it explained. Transpac says it has no other customers preparing to use Channel-D on a national level yet.
