[Technologist]

The government wanted to auction off the teletext spectrum to private companies within sectors such as banking. …..

Here at page 4 is the BBCs take on the broadcasting bill …and David Mellor!!
www.bbceng.info 
But as it’s “spare” data capacity continued being under pressure for some years
Hence the BBC Ceefax engines outputting on 13 1/2 line pairs
but the emission was on 12 line pairs including the commercial datacast
Hence having less than 1% redundant packets ….
BBC inserted Ceefax at regional centres and used clever MRG data bridges that they specified .

The use of broadcast services for commercial data was rather limited …..
betting, duff credit cards, LSE , all had time sensitive data to lots of outlets .
BMW used car update less so but it was more economic to mail out CD weekly and just use the broadcast for updates …
The BBC used data broadcasting for Presfax and Telfax (see p7) and for a short time talkback to news obs .