Prestel offer boxes clever

IT'S A BIT like British Gas installing free cookers if you convert to gas. Peter Probert is giving away 10,000 black boxes in an effort to make the British public finally wake up to Prestel, BT's computer information network. Probert has bought 10,000 modems, which make it possible to send and receive computer data over the telephone, and is giving them away free to anyone who takes out a year's subscription to Micronet,the electronic magazine published on Prestel. "It's crazy," says Probert , marketing manager of Micronet. "We 're not in the business of selling hardware. We just sell an information service. But we can't wait forever for Prestel to be innovative ." When the Post Office launched Prestel in 1979, it had a world-beating product and confidently predicted 200,000 users - mostly dom - estic — within three years.

Now, seven years on , there are only 67,000 Prestel subscribers and, contrary to predictions, most are busi - nesses . Prestel has become

another of Britain 's lost opportunities — a classic example of strength in innovation and weakness in marketing. Probert , who has already attracted most domestic Prestel users from Micronet's 20,000 subscribers, cites France as an example of how big the market could be. France is spending 3 billion francs on its Prestel equiva - le n t , Teletel , which was set up in 1981 and already has 1.6m terminals. These include a table-mat sized screen, keyboard and numeric pad, and can be used to dial the 23m entries in the French