How is French society and government adjusting to the new technological age?
Laffitte: I think that France has a very good connection to what we call telematics, the connection between computer science and telecommunications. We developed the Minitel system 12 years ago. Now, we have more than 7 million Minitels in France, which means that about 20 million people are acquainted with the types of services which only began recently in the rest of the world. We have more than 20,000 different services with Minitel, including air ticketing and banking. This means there is a very good connection with the people as to what the Information Age can give, produce and help. At the same time, the French government has begun a lot of different experiments, just like in the United States. For instance, in the Sophia Antipolis in the south of France, we have ATM loops with 10 ATM switches connected to 50 or 60 big companies. We have also developed groups there in order to mix users and content providers, and another group to mix content providers with cable operators or tele
