BBC teletext service, Ceefax, was introduced, created initially to provide subtitling, but developed into a news and information service. In 1978, BBC staff went on strike just before the Christmas of that year, thus blocking out the transmission of both channels and amalgamating all four radio stations into one. Since the deregulation of the UK television and radio market in the 1980s, the BBC has faced increased competition from the commercial sector (and from the advertiser-funded public service broadcaster Channel 4), especially on satellite television, cable television, and digital television services. In the late 1980s, the BBC began a process of
Teletext death, but the widespread rollout of internet access in the 1990s ended these efforts. Besides the US and UK developments, a number of similar teletext services were developed in other countries, some of which attempted to address the limitations of the initial British-developed system. In France, where the SECAM standard is used in television broadcasting, a teletext system was developed in the late 1970s under the name "Antiope". It had a higher data rate and was capable of dynamic page sizes, allowing more sophisticated graphics. It was phased out in favour of standard teletext in 1991. The Acorn BBC Micro's