Paris, France - Jet Multimedia aims to take on both Netscape Communications, and Microsoft, and have its France Explorer browser become the French standard instead of Netscape Navigator, or Microsoft Explorer.

A spokeswoman for the small Lyon-based company said on Friday that France Explorer would be distributed for free at the start of 1997 and the programme would allow access to the Internet, to existing multimedia servers as well as to France's Minitel on-line database from a home personal computer.

She declined to give many details ahead of an official launch of the programme by Jet Multimedia's founding chairman Eric Peyre on December 12.

But the software programme, using a new France Telecom service for Internet access, could become a challenge to existing Internet Access Providers. It could also impact content providers in France such as AOL -- a joint-venture of America Online, and Bertelsmann -- CompuServe, and smaller Infonie by drawing away new customers.

France Telecom, which launched its own Wanadoo online service in association with Havas in May, and which currently uses a French language version of the Microsoft Explorer, will in January open a service that it calls ``The Internet Kiosk''.

These are special telephone numbers which give access to the Internet using the France Telecom backbone telecommunications infrastructure. These numbers can obtained by companies such as Jet Multimedia and a caller will pay for use by duration.

France Telecom will charge the amount on the telephone bill and will pay the service company a part of the money.

``Jet Multimedia is not aiming to make money on the software. They want people to use their phone number and their existing servers,'' the spokeswoman said.

The system of paying for the use of Internet time, instead of paying a monthly subscription to an Internet Access Provider for a fixed number of hours of usage, could be attractive to people who are not great travellers in cyberspace.

These subscribers are currently served with subscriptions to AOL, the cheapest at 49 francs per month, CompuServe, Microsoft's MSN or Club Internet run by Hachette.

Jet Multimedia was founded under the name Jet Lag in 1989 and specialises in electronic publishing and multimedia technology. The company acquired telecommunication technology specialist Computer Answer Line (CAL) in September.

Jet Multimedia raised 43 million francs in April when it was listed on the small-cap market Second Marche at an issue price of 400 francs.

The company, 64 percent owned by management among which Peyre has 16 percent, had higher 1995 sales of 165 million francs but its net profit slipped to 7.2 million francs from 12.5 million francs due to acquisitions.

The group is France's third-biggest telematic services company -- offering database services via the Minitel -- after Axime and Assistance Genie Logiciel (AGL).

On Friday, Jet Multimedia shares were trading 17 francs or 2.34 percent lower at 710 francs at midday while the blue-chip CAC-40 index was down 1.9 percent.

Source: Reuters