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Minitel Hits Twenty
An anonymous submitter writes "Minitel is now 20 years old, according to this article from BBC News: 'Calling Minitel a proto-internet may be a bit of a stretch, but it is not far off. Unlike the internet, Minitel is a closed network, based on the phone system of its owner, France Telecom. Using one of its prehistoric-seeming terminals, users can access a labyrinth of proprietary content, all of it determinedly low-graphics and designed for speed.' Slashdot has reported on Minitel before."
What kind of taxes are levied against Minitel transactions, pray tell?
'Calling Minitel a proto-internet may be a bit of a stretch, but it is not far off'
What about Darpanet? Isn't that the true proto-internet given that it predates minitel and was a much larger network and, oh yeah, formed the backbone of the internet?
I don't get it. Why not offer web and email access via Minitel (lynx and pine, or equivalent)? It seems that FT have resisted doing this for a long time.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
> all of it determinedly low-graphics and designed for speed.
I assume whoever wrote this never used Minitel, the darn thing is designed to keep you on line as long as possible so France Telecom can rake in more money
I knew you could. Minitel must be a gold mine of anti-internet-patent prior art.
Johnny
Do you think Minitel may be slowing the rate of Internet takeup in France? I mean, why bother buying a computer when you already have this nice little Minitel terminal that does just about everything you need without any unnecessary complications?
OLPC Australia
...now will you please die?
The Minitel is an obsolete piece of technology. Yes, it was revolutionary twenty years ago. But it has slowed French innovcation down ever since. The sail has become an anchor.
Why is the Minitel still in use today? France Telecome still makes a significant profit from the overpriced service and has no intention to give it up. The Minitel's prime use is what we use the interenet for, yellow and white pages.
The interface isn't simpler, the boxes are ugly and unpractical, the service costs a fortune. I can't see why the Minitel couldn't be replaced by cheap, mass produced computers connected to the internet.
Trollem mirabilem hanc subnotationis exigiutas non caperet
This service was called Ibertex. Required a 300bps modem to enter (lately 2400 were accepted woohooo) and I think it is still working (dial 031 anyone?)
May the source be with you!
Having lived in France during the introduction of the Internet, I remember many details:
:)
The Minitel is liek a BBS system, except that you got the terminal (screen and keyboard) from the phone company for cheap. There were (now it's declining due to the net) any kind of service that you could image. You thing pop-ups are bad? You haven't seen anything until you've seen a street of Paris filled with posters showing a barely clad woman and advertising some Minitel dating service.
For me the Minitel shows how even old people can embrace new technology if you make it easy for them. EVERYONE used the minitel, and companies set up Minitel servers before the concept of website was even imagined. We had chatrooms, forums (a la Slashdot) etc. Considering these were billed per minute, and billings varied from $0.2 to $1, it can get very expensive.
However having the machine at home costed you about $3-4 per month, not much considering what you could get. Most families that I know over there had a minitel, at least for using as a phone book (first 3 minutes of phone book browsing service were free).
However, it was (is) a real cash cow, so of course when the Net came along France Telecom was very reluctant to move away from this service. Which is a damn shame, because I'm sure they could have made a profit selling "Internet minitels", the same thing except with Internet access... however, with these no company can charge $1/minute, so, the move was not popular with companies either. There were some Internet phones, but at $500, they failed miserably.
Today I wish the service a quick death, because there's really nothing left there that cannot be done faster and more comfortably through the Internet (max connection speed for the minitel was, IIRC, 9600 bps, and only for some servers!). And you can recycle the devices: there's a lot of documentation of how the teletext terminal work, so you can easily hook up a network of those for whatever you want.
France was an innovator back then, but because they latched on their own system and failed to adapt, they were slow in adopting the Internet. The new generation, however, having grown up with minitel technology, was very quick to jump into the Net train. As a matter of fact, many French free webhosting services were created by guys who ran free BBS or inexpensive (the phone company always made money) Minitel servers back in the day!
The ENIAC Demo Competition
Does Minitel suffer from spam messages and pop-up ads, or has it avoided the plagues of the Internet?
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
As featured in The Hacker's Handbook of long ago ....
Alison
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." - Albert Einstein
It had more than a passing similarty to Ceefax, Prestel *was* a version of the Ceefax service, developed in the early 70's. The BBC went on to produce ORACLE, and the Post Office went on to produce Prestel, the all used the same protocol (BTS).
However, readers should note that Prestel was not simply like what people think of as being 'Ceefax' today, Prestel could display on much higher spec'd terminals, you could download and install software via Prestel, and perfom transactions, and use mail.
You've got think, the first telex system was invented in the UK and we don't really bother with it any more (apart from a few sputtering pages displaying the latest news headlines in hotel lobbies), that should be a sign it's day is at an end.
As for being xenophobic, well this standard was used in many countries (I'm not sure how many, but more than 10), and in any case that comment rather misses the point that the UK is not clinging to this service but rather actively seeking to replace it (with a new much improved solution). It's supported for legacy reasons (i.e. lots of older televisions with out digital decoders still find it useful).
The French are still trying to find new ways to use Minitel, even building new hardware, simply because it's 'their' system.
If you don't get it I won't bother explaining it. Just look around some other European countries and see how many of them are still clinging to similar desperately antiquated systems, *sarcasam* oh your right, the French arn't really xenphobic, it's all in our heads, they don't really go around hassing web site providers and educational establishements because they don't have a high enough percentage of French content, we just imagined it. *end sarcasam*
"RTC"s were free local Minitel servers made by individuals.
:)
Sure, there were not a lot of possible concurrent access (because phone lines were expensive for the server owner), but RTCs were really fun, especially because all people were living in the same area.
With some previous other RTC freaks, I'm trying to make a meeting of former RTC users in Paris. If you were addicted to RTC-ONE, JEF, OXYGENE, APOGEE and other RTCs, and if you live in Paris, please drop me a little mail at rtc@pureftpd.org . It would be really kewl to meet each other to remember the good'ol time
-ChrYsaLiS.
{{.sig}}
When I was 14/15 years old... meaning 16 years ago, I use to use our minitel at home like crazy.
I was members of different groups, add my Amstrad, and then Amiga, was hacking on Minitel for some fun. It wasn't actually _that_ secure.
We discovered some flaws and I was using the minitel to communicate 'secretly' with other people of my group, having also mail functionnality, we were to leave ourself mails to retrieve at some other time, actually it was very similar to IRC to talk, that was so cool, be able to communicate with people all other France, and even with some other X25 networks by hacking into it, communicate with other companies and other friends for free... that was the good time...
Actually thinking about it, that the minitel is so old (20years), maybe some of the technology used for it is old enought so it could be use to dismiss some recent patents? Because the minitel was kind of a browser, with a keyboard as the navigation interface.
Not a good example.
:)
This service is extremely ugly and bad designed
Videotex is way more powerful that what you can see here. Every character, including graphical ones can be redefined (8x12 dots), and latest minitels can also display jpeg images with full colors.
There are also plenty of tricks to speed up things (like using a lot CAN), and to make things look better (like overlapping double-sized characters that produces nice chrome effects). This service uses none.
{{.sig}}
At least as of 5 years ago, FT had lost money on Minitel for each and every year that it was operational. Some content providers were making a profit (the porn providers, if other /. comments are to be trusted) but FT required life support from the government from day one.
Happy birthday and all, but how do you say "pork-barrell politics" in french?
--
Actually, the Minitel is just a terminal with an internal (1200 bps) modem. I've used my Minitel to connect to my university mainframe, mostly to read my mail when I was on holiday.
/etc/inittab, and eventually /etc/gettydefs!
/etc/termcap and /usr/share/terminfo, you will find a few "minitel" entries.
Some people have connected their Minitel to their Linux machine. A (simple) custom cable needs to be soldered, and then all that needs to be done is to edit
The Minitel is more or less VT100-compatible, with some custom escape sequences to handle eight(?) colors (shades of gray on most models) and semi-graphical characters.
Have a look in