Introduction

Because Viewdata was such an easy system to implement, a great number of private services were set up by hobbyists, schools, commercial organisations, etc.

Many of these used home-grown software, but a number of commercial product were available.  These included:

• CommunITel - BBC Micro - aimed at schools, this worked either as a single-user system or a multi-user service on an econet network.  A CommunITel branded modem was available to support dial-up users.

• Autonomic Systems/SoftMachinery - BBC Micro - written to overcome the limitations of CommunITel, this quickly became a substantial package offering every capability you could imagine.  Required an econet network and multiple stations for full functionality, but capable of working single-user on an ADFS based system.