business art technology
inspiring contents reflecting electronic media
The content in this document is compiled from different sources. BAT has made moderate effort to make it accurate. We do not take responsibility if statements here turns out to be wrong. Note that this is a very turbulent business. Please bear with us if things have changed without reflections hereunder.
According to an analyse from Dataquest, the total worldwide number of users was 12,5 millions in 1994. Users normally pay a per month flat fee around 5 to 10 USD. Sometimes communication and access time surcharges apply.
The services listed here built initially on proprietary platforms. E.g. the computer software was tailor-made for each service. Lately they have all adopted to the internet. Both by providing a gateway to internet and by adjusting their interfaces to allow browsing on the net. Except for Europe Online, all services listed below requires specific software. It can be downloaded for free from their home pages on the internet.
There are other services that build on open platform systems. Such as for example First Class, Lotus Notes or Excalibur. And a lot of services build on the internet platform, but the services listed below are usually labeled On-Line services.
Service: The marketed
name of the service
Geographical base: Where it has localized content and local
access
No of users: (estimate if available)
Contact: most convenient ways for Europeans
| America Online | USA
Canada | 6 million | www.aol.com
T +1 800 827 6364 |
| AOL/Bertelsmann online | Germany, UK, France (Spain, Italy planned) | www.aol.com T +49 40 361 59266 F +49 40 361 59333 | |
| Compuserve | USA >20 European countries most of the world | 5 million, incl >400.00 in Europe | www.compuserve.com
T +49 89 665500 F +49 89 66550250 |
| Microsoft Network | USA France, Germany, UK Scandinavia | www.msn.com T +49 89 31760 F +49 89 3176100 | |
| Prodigy | USA, Canada, UK | www.prodigy.com | |
| WOW | USA, Canada | Sister to Compuserve | http://world.compuserve.com/ |
Updated 1996-10-27