Editing Telidon (section)

===Public testing===

The release of Norpac's Telidon terminal led to announcements by broadcasters and news organizations who would be rolling out test systems starting late that year. However, a variety of delays pushed back most of these programs into 1980. The race to have the first operational deployment was won by the small town of [[Rural Municipality of Headingley|South Headingley]], just west of [[Winnipeg]], part of an experimental system being deployed by the [[Manitoba Telecom Services|Manitoba Telephone System]] (MTS), the local cable operator.<ref name=ida>''Ida''</ref>

Named for Ida Cates, Manitoba's first woman telephone operator in the 1880s, "Project Ida" was part of a wider rollout of advanced cable technologies that MTS had been planning since 1978 to study ways to use up the bandwidth capabilities of newer cable systems. Services included Telidon, [[cable telephony]], [[pay TV]] service using outdoor converters (instead of set top boxes), and low-bandwidth backchannel data services for gas and electrical billing and alarm services.<ref name=ida>''Ida''</ref>

The Telidon services that formed part of Project Ida were created by Infomart, a [[Toronto]]-based company set up to provide Telidon content. It was hosted on two computers set up in Winnipeg and run by MTS, providing a 4800 baud channel to the in-home terminals.<ref name=ida/> Originally scheduled for January 1980, delays pushed this back to mid-year.<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20070705053836/http://www.telidonhistoryproject.ca/ida/projectida_mtsdialogue.html "Questions Concerning Project Ida"], ''MTS Dialog'', Volume 1 Number 1 (May 1980)</ref> Ida ran until 1981, when most of the services were dropped and the cables returned to normal analog signals, although an offshoot using [[Optical fiber cable|optical cable]] was carried out in [[Elie, Manitoba|Elie]], rotating the terminals though many households in the area.

Ida was followed by several Canadian companies starting similar projects. In early 1980, [[TVOntario]], the educational television channel run by the Ontario government, set up 45 terminals in the Toronto area. In April 1981, [[NBTel|New Brunswick Telephone]] set up a system practically identical to Project Ida with a full suite of services, with somewhere between 20 and 100 terminals. The same month, [[Alberta Government Telephones]] started "Project VIDON", a smaller modem-based test in the [[Calgary]] area. A month later, [[Bell Canada]] announced their "Vista" project in Toronto and Montreal, in partnership with the ''[[Toronto Star]]'' and the ''[[Postmedia News|Southam Press]]'' who would provide content. This test eventually expanded to between 500 and 1000 terminals.<ref name=rice>Rice and Paisley, pg. 225</ref>

Telidon generated interest outside Canada as well. A major foreign sale was made in July 1980 to the government of Venezuela, who set up a test system to provide information on health, social and economic aid programs to people moving into [[Caracas]] from rural areas.<ref name=rice/>

A number of U.S. companies also expressed an interest, and started plans for their own Telidon-based teletext systems. As early as 1978, [[AT&T Corporation]] and [[CBS]] had been experimenting with the idea of a videotex service, and were drawn towards the Telidon efforts. In 1982 they introduced an experimental system known as "Venture One" in [[Ridgewood, New Jersey]], equipping some homes with standalone terminals from AT&T, and others with set-top boxes. The test ran for seven months from 1982 to 83, and was considered a success, so much so that AT&T publicly announced plans to introduce a commercial system in 1984.<ref name="Banks p. 140">{{harvnb|Banks|2008|p=140}}</ref>

General Motors' EPIC Project used special user access kiosks with video-disk based motion video and sound integrated with Teldion data arriving from the data center in Flint, Michigan. Kiosks were distributed to hundreds of shopping malls and Buick dealers in various states. Users were able to leave their addresses for future contact, request car brochures or explore all technical and visual data with motion and sound to see all the car models available. This particular project was the single largest sale of Telidon in North America and allowed users to examine car models without speaking with a car salesperson.<ref>M.T. Sindel, EPIC Project Mgr., Infomart, 1983</ref>