A Terminal in Every Home?

By Philip Faflick

The bold French plan for giving away electronic phone books

When French Dance Student Isabelle Michalowski, 17, wants to find a local nightspot that is still open during the summer vacation, she lets her fingers do the walking--not through the Yellow Pages, but across the keyboard of a computer console. Using the small video terminal that has been provided by the state-owned French telephone company, she punches a few keys and then taps out the words DISCOS--RENNES. Seconds later the names, addresses and telephone numbers flash on the screen. She then hits another button and an illustrated advertisement appears on the screen. It reads: "Pym's American Bar, dancing nightly, 10 p.m. to 2 a.m., all year round." Voil`a!

Isabelle is part of one of the most adventurous computer experiments yet conducted. The French phone company has ordered 300,000 more consoles just like hers, the largest single contract for computer terminals ever signed. This month it will begin giving them away around the northwestern city of Rennes at the rate of 10,000 a month. For those who request one, the computer terminal will be a standard feature of their telephone service, replacing the local phone book. Instead of looking up a number in the directory, customers will simply turn on a machine and search for the number electronically.

While her mother Michelle still complains that "the box" is "not at all aesthetic" and rarely uses it, Isabelle has quickly taken to the new technology. She consults the electronic phone book at least three times a week, calling up lists of music halls, dance studios and movie theaters. "Whenever I need a phone book now, I always use the electronique, "says Isabelle. "It's much quicker and a lot more fun."

The electronic phone book offers the user far more services than a paper one. To find a mechanic to fix the family car, he just types in the make of his auto and his address. The machine will then provide the name and location of the nearest garage servicing that model. To speak to a friend in America, the customer presses another button and the screen shows a map of the world marked with the costs and dialing procedures for the different countries. The telephone computer can find a name even if it is not being spelled correctly. Given the phonetic spelling of a name, the computer provides the phone numbers and addresses of all the names that sound the same. For example, if the caller is looking for Jacques Legalle, but types "Jacques Le Gal" into the computer, the machine will still come up with the right name.

The French phone company maintains that the computer is also more economical in the long run. By mass-producing the tiny terminals, it has brought the cost of each machine down to $320, still considerably more than the cost of a book, but getting closer. Moreover, the electronic phone book does not have to be replaced each year. It is also more accurate than the paper edition because the computer can be automatically and instantaneously updated. By the time 25 million phone books have been printed and distributed, about one-third of the information is no longer accurate.

The electronic phone book project began two years ago with 55 volunteers in the north coast town of St.-Malo. Last year it expanded to include 1,500 families in and around the city of Rennes. This year the phone company has been giving systematic demonstrations to local groups all through the region. The service seems to be catching on. "People come expecting something much more complicated than the simple machine we actually show them," says Jean-Claude Lanoe, a technician involved in the promotional campaign. "By the time the demonstration is over, everyone asks, 'So when are you going to bring us these machines?' "

The idea of giving every Frenchman who wants one his own terminal is part of the Paris government's aggressive push into computers. Convinced that the technology is a key to industrial development in the 1980s and 1990s, the French are investing heavily in the field, building their own Silicon Valleys in Brittany and Lorraine. The Ministry of Industry even had the Academie Franc,aise, which is the mighty guardian of the French language, approve a shiny new word to go along with the new hardware: informatique. Some French officials are already worried about new examples of dreaded Franglais like le hardware and le software.

Once the computer has gone in the front door as an electronic phone book, the French have all sorts of other plans for it. The same video console can be used for many services, from remote-control banking to electronic mail to fingertip shopping. The French are experimenting with just about every conceivable application. In a test program in three suburbs of Paris, 2,500 terminals have been installed that permit people to check airline schedules or place orders with mail-order catalogues using the computer.

Thirty farming villages between Bordeaux and Toulouse have terminals that dispense data about social security rights, building permit procedures and agricultural laws. Bank managers at Credit Agricole, a financial institution specializing in agricultural loans, can use 24 terminals in Brittany to look at the names, addresses and accounts of all their clients. In Grenoble and Nantes, users can tap two municipal terminals to summon information about military service, student fellowships and job openings. In Paris, 120 hotels offer their guests 4,500 pages of electronic information, ranging from gastronomic advice to the latest stock market quotes. Next year major informatique programs are scheduled to begin in Amiens, Lille and Nancy.

French ambitions go beyond national borders. In an effort to make Paris a world headquarters of the computer revolution, the government has established the grandly named Centre Mondial Informatique et Ressources Humaines (World Center for Personal Computation and Human Development). Headed by Author-Politician Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber, the organization recently lured to Paris four of America's foremost computer scientists. With that kind of expertise and top government support, computers of the future are likely to have at least a slight French accent.

--By Philip Faflick. Reported by Pam Schirmeister/Paris

With reporting by Pam Schirmeister

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