I'm late to the party, but since I was active on the various services back then, I'll also cast my mind back to answer. Essentially, the scene then was totally hobbiest or business. Each of these early services were walled gardens.
First, as I recall it that AT&T experiment was down in Florida, and was mostly a newspaper subscription/shopping thing. However, it was another of the walled gardens and didn't offer as much as other services. In 1983, I was active on Compuserve, FidoNet and UseNet- then slightly later BIX. I'm trying to remember, but it seems to me that even back then Lexis/Nexis was the powerhouse in the news services. Businesses paid through the nose for Lexis/Nexis at the time. I know I used to go to GWU's Law library to use it, but even then CIS had more databases you could access than ViewTron. ViewTron was aimed more at consumers, who frankly weren't that interested, especially when you had to buy a specific terminal for it.
The commercial services were all walled gardens in 1983. Everything was dial-up, and you paid per minute. 300 baud modems were common. I was the proud owner of one of the first Hayes 1200B modems. I wrote communications programs to help run the stupid thing. To this day, if I hit the right spot in my memory I can spout AT commands and tell you which dipswitches on various modems do what. I remember having to install a second line at my home, and god forbid you said you wanted it for a computer, because the phone company was convinced that if you wanted a computer line, then you must be running a business. You had to be REALLY serious about your communications back then.
I see this thread has brought out a bunch of the Fido SysOps - Hi guys! Long time no see!
TL;DR - ViewTron was slow, didn't compare well to other offerings, and was a walled garden.
Sitting on a shelf behind me is Procomm, Qmodem, Compuserve and, golly, a book from BYTE. Oddly enough, I can still do the AT commands because I had them all memorized from back in the day when I was a telecom bit flipper. 8-) Man this is taking me back to XModem CRC and all that fun stuff. Good times::leans back in rocking chair and drinks an adult beverage::
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I'm late to the party, but since I was active on the various services back then, I'll also cast my mind back to answer. Essentially, the scene then was totally hobbiest or business. Each of these early services were walled gardens. First, as I recall it that AT&T experiment was down in Florida, and was mostly a newspaper subscription/shopping thing. However, it was another of the walled gardens and didn't offer as much as other services. In 1983, I was active on Compuserve, FidoNet and UseNet- then slightly later BIX. I'm trying to remember, but it seems to me that even back then Lexis/Nexis was the powerhouse in the news services. Businesses paid through the nose for Lexis/Nexis at the time. I know I used to go to GWU's Law library to use it, but even then CIS had more databases you could access than ViewTron. ViewTron was aimed more at consumers, who frankly weren't that interested, especially when you had to buy a specific terminal for it. The commercial services were all walled gardens in 1983. Everything was dial-up, and you paid per minute. 300 baud modems were common. I was the proud owner of one of the first Hayes 1200B modems. I wrote communications programs to help run the stupid thing. To this day, if I hit the right spot in my memory I can spout AT commands and tell you which dipswitches on various modems do what. I remember having to install a second line at my home, and god forbid you said you wanted it for a computer, because the phone company was convinced that if you wanted a computer line, then you must be running a business. You had to be REALLY serious about your communications back then. I see this thread has brought out a bunch of the Fido SysOps - Hi guys! Long time no see! TL;DR - ViewTron was slow, didn't compare well to other offerings, and was a walled garden.
Sitting on a shelf behind me is Procomm, Qmodem, Compuserve and, golly, a book from BYTE. Oddly enough, I can still do the AT commands because I had them all memorized from back in the day when I was a telecom bit flipper. 8-) Man this is taking me back to XModem CRC and all that fun stuff. Good times ::leans back in rocking chair and drinks an adult beverage::