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Videotel, a multimedia terminal fitted with a
CB card reader will be released on the market in September 2003.
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Videotel is taking off. Testing began last November on this multimedia
terminal equipped with a smart card reader, combining telephone, Minitel,
e-mail, videophone and much more, and will continue through to this
summer with 350 users in the corporate sector. Connected to a
Numéris ADSL line, it provides the first "testers"
with access to demonstration Videotel services that combine text,
image, video and sound: these include the French TF1 TV network's
1.00 pm news broadcast, Méteo France weather forecasts,
Argus automobile magazine, Century 21 real estate, information
and advertising by retailers in the Montpellier region, and Interflora,
the first merchant service on this system allowing purchasers to make
secured payments by CB card. "Call Image, the French company
that manufactures this terminal, is drawing very encouraging conclusions
from this pilot operation: a high number of log-ons combined with
a high level of user satisfaction", indicated Gaëtan Daligault,
Head of Personal Terminals and Remote Services at Cartes Bancaires.
Starting next September, around 20,000 Videotel terminals (connected
via ADSL or Numéris) should be distributed each month through
France Telecom (a Call Image shareholder) and other specialist outlets.
Users can choose to buy or lease their terminal (rent or lease-to-buy),
notably through a package which includes an ADSL subscription. Equipped
with a terminal, they can then access a services portal on a server
managed by Call Image, and pay for purchases using the Videotel secure
payment system which is compatible with the Embedded FINREAD specifications,
in just the same way as they would with a standard Eftpos terminal.
Starting in 2004, it will be possible to pay, in the same secured
manner, at merchants hosted on other servers, using the CB Internet
payment system, the specifications of which will be published this summer.
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