The Teleputing Hotline The Worldwide Network Letter Volume 3 Number 87 -- November 6, 1990 215 Winter Avenue, Atlanta, GA 30317 FAX: 404-378-0794 Phone: 404-373-7634 MCI:409-8960 GEnie: nb.atl CompuServe: 76200,3025 Editor: Dana Blankenhorn European Editor: Steve Gold Associate Publisher: Lamont Wood Correspondent: Masayuki Miyazawa Sales Manager: Hiro Nakamura PRODIGY ELIMINATES ACCOUNTS OF E-MAIL PROTESTERS Prodigy killed accounts of 8 people who were protesting a rate hike for electronic mail, and squashed further complaints by banning future messages devoted to the issue. One of those cut off, Herb Rothman, is featured in a Prodigy promotional brochure. The hike is 25 cents per message after the first 30 in a month, starting January 1. This is on top of a 25% price hike, from $9.95 to $12.95, writes Wendy Woods for Newsbytes. The protestors, called the Cooperative Defense Campaign, claim they have 19,000 supporters, and plan a mailing to them. The list, and the controversy, could also be used by GEnie and CompuServe to counter-attack Prodigy in the market. Prodigy claims it has 600,000 members, the same as CompuServe. But it is *not* a communications service. The system is funded through 10% commissions from sales made on it, spurred by heavy online advertising. TOKYO DATA SHOW: WEALTH OF TINY COMPUTERS ATTRACT CROWDS Notebook computers were the hit of the Tokyo Data Show. One of the most popular was Fujitsu's FMR-CARD, weighing 990 grams, (2 lbs.) running for 8 hours on a battery charge, and featuring two slots for add-in memory or program cards. It costs 238,000 yen ($1,900), and will be available next February, writes Ken Takahashi of Newsbytes. NEC showed its Handy 98, but it's incompatible with NEC's own PC- 9801 standard. Epson featured three laptops which are PC-9801 compatible. Kyocera showed its 16-bit REFALO, which recognizes hand-written Japanese kana characters on a pen-sensitive screen. It will compete with the Sony PalmTop. Matsushita had the Panacom PRO NOTE, with 2 megabytes of storage and a fast 80386SX chip. "King of Laptops" Toshiba featured its 2,500-gram DynaBook286, which has a faster chip and a price of 198,000 yen ($1,600). Color laptop computers were shown by Toshiba, Fujitsu, Sharp and Oki, but they're still far from being real products. Toshiba had an experimental device with a 10-inch screen which can superimpose data and kanji characters. Fujitsu's FMR-50LX was typical, however, costing 1,298,000 yen ($10,300) with a monitor. BELLS CONTINUE MOVE TOWARD PCN U.S. Bell companies continue to move toward adopting Personal Communication Network technology as a follow-on to present cellular systems. PCN will let people make calls from wallet- sized phones, linked directly to the wired phone network. Ameritech asked for an experimental license to test the technology in Chicago. Bellsouth won a license to test the technology in Atlanta at 3 frequency ranges. SPRINT MAKES SOME MOVES US Sprint, the #3 U.S. long-distance firm, began offering its Virtual Private Network service, to Canada, through a link with Unitel. Sprint also linked its SprintNet data network to Info AG of Germany, which provides data services in 14 German cities, and satellite connections in the 5 eastern provinces known until last month as East Germany. Sprint will enter the EDI electronic invoicing and X.400 mail- switching markets, with a switch called TPX400 which lets big companies route their own mail. And it announced Mac SprintMail, a software package allowing Macintosh PCs to access the service easily, along with a news clipping service which filters 15 newswires based on keywords input by users. Finally, the company will participate in a Russian Republic project to turn the Far East port of Nhodka into a free trade zone, laying an 800 km. fiber cable between Nakhodka and Japan, in a joint-venture with Soviet interests. Nakhodka will have 4 new seaports and a new airport from Bechtel of the U.S. AMERICAN EXPRESS ENTERS LONG-DISTANCE MARKET American Express cardholders can now have overseas and domestic calls made by MCI or US Sprint billed to their accounts. American Express has 25.8 million members. Citibank, the largest issuer of Visa and MasterCards, earlier decided to let its users bill MCI calls to its credit cards. Both moves are slaps at AT&T, which began offering its Universal Card this year, and now has an estimated 5.8 million cardholders on 3.6 million accounts. MACS ATTACKED BY MDEF C VIRUS The MDEF virus from Ithaca, NY, which was thought to have been killed off before leaving the area, has been found alive in a new strain called MDEF C, which attacks applications and system files by adding its viral resource number and renumbering the system menu definition in the system file. The effect is erratic menu behavior and an attempt to bypass antivirus programs, according to Symantec, maker of a antiviral program. Symantec is offering an antidote and information through its 24-hour phone newsline, at 408-255-8744, or on Applelink in the Third Party Connection folder under Software Updates, writes Wendy Woods for Newsbytes. REUTERS LAYS OFF 300, DELAYS TRADING SYSTEM Reuters will postpone Phase 2 of its Dealing 2000 foreign exchange trading system for 6 months, and lay-off 300 people. The delays will not impact Globex, the automated futures trading project Reuters is developing with the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and Chicago Board of Trade, or its InstiNet stock trading system, writes Wendy Woods. ONLINE FACTOIDS AT&T announced AT&T Language Line Services, a translation service using live operators. It costs $3.50 per minute, plus long- distance charges. CHINA bought $34 million of digital switches from Alcatel Sesa of Spain, to serve 118,000 new lines in Shanghai. ENTEL, Argentina's phone system, will be sold to Italian, French and Spanish interests, following a compromise on the rates to be charged for calls. INFONET signed its way into the Dominican Republic through a deal with CODETEL, a GTE unit which runs the nation's Codepack data network. JAPAN VICTOR CORP. (JVC) has developed a 3.5-inch 40 megabyte hard disk. The JD-E2850P measures 7 x 10 x 1.9 cm, and weighs 210 grams, consuming only 2 watts of electricity. A sample costs 100,000 yen, but JVC will develop an upgraded version with more memory next year. SENATOR ALBERT GORE won $35 million in funding for a U.S. supercomputer network in the budget passed by Congress. The White House may sponsor the $390 million network next year, assuring its completion. TEXAS INSTRUMENTS introduced a notebook 386-based PC called TravelMate 3000, costing $5,499 with a 20-megabyte hard drive. CONTACT: Ameritech, Steve Ford, +312-750-5205 AT&T, Mark Siegel, +201/221-8413 Australian Government, Nick Verykios, +61-2-888 5533 BellSouth, Carlton Hill, +404-249-4135 Infonet, Mike Radice +213-335-2877 Newsbytes, Wendy Woods, +415-550-73343 Symantec, Lisa Peters, +408-446-8856 Texas Instruments, 800-527-3500 US Sprint, Robin Pence, +202-828-7454