In May 1985, The Nordic Council of Ministers granted 9.2 million NOK (roughly the equivalent of £1 million) to a Nordic university network, named NORDUnet. At the same time, the Nordic telecommunication companies created a joint company providing one-stop shopping for inter-Nordic lines called Scantele, running on a 64 kbit/s line which made it easy to create NORDUnet. In 1988 NORDUnet became operational and connected to the American National Science Foundation Network (NSFnet) via a 56 kbit/s satellite line to the John von Neumann Center at Princeton University, New Jersey, and then on to the NSFnet which itself had only initiated operations in 1986 using the TCP/IP standard.