World-NET

» see worldnet.net as it lived, on the wayback machine

~ the obit ~

World-NET first went on sale on 15 February 1994, from a stand at the Computer Associates trade fair in Paris. Sébastien Socchard ran it, with Philippe Langlois and Pierre Séguret alongside him. The company carried the initials of SCT, Security Concept and Technology, the computer-security consultancy Socchard had registered in October 1988 and then pointed at something else entirely. France already had an internet provider in Oléane, but Oléane sold to companies and universities. World-NET sold to whoever walked up.

The distribution trick was the part that worked. In September 1994 the connection kit went out on a floppy disk bound into the magazine InfoPC, carrying three free hours, and it was the first time anybody in France had done that. The same kit rode along in more than thirty books from publishers like Sybex and Micro Application over the two years that followed, moving from floppy to CD-ROM as the files grew. By October 1994 a thousand new subscribers a month were turning up and the equipment could not absorb them. PC Expert named World-NET the best internet provider in France that same month.

Then came a run of French firsts, most of them small and one of them large. National dial-up arrived in February 1996 on the number 36.64.40.00, at speeds between 14,400 and 28,800 bits per second, with ten access points established around the country. On 21 January 1997 World-NET became the provider whose signup offer shipped inside Windows on French computers. Subscribers passed ten thousand in June 1997. That November the service went to 56k and gave every account a page perso, a personal website, years before anybody called that blogging.

By 2000 World-NET was the last independent operator left standing, turning over 22 million francs. Kaptech bought it in May of that year, weeks before the bubble burst, and completed the deal in June. Kaptech became 9Telecom and then Neuf Telecom, and the service it had bought ran for two more years under those names.

~ the rap sheet ~

~ eighty francs an hour ~

The first subscribers paid 80 francs for an hour, and the meter was only half the bill, because France Télécom charged for the call underneath it. World-NET signed up more than three thousand people in that first year on those terms. An unlimited package at 99 francs came later, and in August 1999 the company added domain registration under the name BookMyName. On 2 December 1998 World-NET put its weight behind the boycott of France Télécom's charges, and by late 2001 its own homepage was carrying the Libre ADSL petition, a campaign against the price of the line World-NET itself resold.

Eighty francs an hour in 1994 is the number that marks the distance. Consumer dial-up reached Turkey years later and reached it priced differently, so the metered-by-the-hour era is one I read about instead of paying for. What survives of it is unusually well documented, because the French press kept binding the floppies into its covers and the covers carried dates.

~ the usenet arrest ~

In May 1996 Sébastien Socchard and Rafi Haladjian, who ran FranceNet, were arrested and held on a charge of possessing child pornography. Neither man had published anything. The charge rested on what their servers relayed, because both carried Usenet in full and Usenet in full included its worst corners. The case was thrown out two years later, and French law was rewritten so that the head of an internet company is not answerable for every byte that crosses it. Two founders sat in a cell for a newsfeed nobody had read.

~ 31 may 2002 ~

CESSATION D'ACTIVITE WORLDNET ran as a heading across the homepage. "Worldnet a été une formidable aventure que vous avez été nombreux à partager depuis les premiers jours du Net en France," it began: Worldnet was a tremendous adventure that many of you shared from the very first days of the Net in France. It went on to say that trust and enthusiasm had evidently not been enough to let the business continue, and that the company was obliged to stop all of its services on 31 May 2002. Nobody took the page down afterward. The archive still finds it there in August 2003, fifteen months past the date it announces.

The ending had started earlier and lower down. The page perso directories were already returning 404 in January 2002, so the personal websites went before the notice did. By March 2005 the old worldnet.fr address was serving a hosting page with a 9Telecom logo on it, which is the name Kaptech had given itself by then. The first general-purpose internet provider in France lasted eight years and three months.

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