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."

Comments

Darpanet?

[haz-mat]

'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?

Re:Darpanet?

[Vollernurd]

Not quite - Minitel was used in homes from the start. Darpanet was, as it's name states, used purely for Defence and Academic applications. The WWW was not around until 1992. Or something.

Re:Darpanet?

[lfourrier]

minitel 1B is still provided free (when you have one, most are at home for 10 years or more)
it provides 24*80 chars, and can, with a very cheap adapter, be connected as a console to the serial port of a linux box.
it make no noise, there is an integrated screen saver, and by using the serial port, you can communicate at 9600, instead of the 75/1200 of the modem.
the only drawback is the limited keyboard, making it very unpratical to input some keys.

So, minitel services can die, but long live the (physical) minitel (the one I have since 1990 show no signs of problem)

Happy birthday Minitel...

[stere0]

...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.

Minital was truly a mixed blessing

[newsdee]

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! :)

Serious question

[Zog The Undeniable]

Does Minitel suffer from spam messages and pop-up ads, or has it avoided the plagues of the Internet?

Re:What's this button for and....

[Draoi]

Prestel (the old UK equivalent) got famously hacked once. There was an old '80s computer show on the Beeb and the presenter was showing off a new fancy feature called 'e-mail'. When he logged in, what he got was this;

Computer Security Error. Illegal access.

I hope your television PROGRAMME runs as smoothly as my PROGRAM worked out your passwords!

As featured in The Hacker's Handbook of long ago ....