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

Business Models or "Developers, developers!"

[Scoria]

Calling Minitel a proto-internet may be a bit of a stretch, but it is not far off. ... all of it determinedly low-graphics and designed for speed.

All right, aspiring web developers and disgruntled dot-bomb employees. Your objective today is to modernize this archaic service: develop a functional implementation of Flash and JavaScript pop-under advertisements, then ensure that all original content is publicly inaccessible. Finally, schedule a decadent yacht party. We're going to party like it's 1999!

Re:Business Models or "Developers, developers!"

[RevAaron]

Yes, it was a dumb mistake on the author's part, exposed to all the ravenous non-believers. He is talking about the internet as we know it now, a functional forerunner of the internet as far as the position it takes in a lot of people's daily lives. 20 years ago, regular Frenchies turned to Minitel for various information like everyone else does with the internet today. If you think ARPAnet was something any schmuck could dial-in to with his modem and get the weather and news- especially 30 years ago- you've got another thing coming to you... :P

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?

[joestar]

The difference is that Minitel has been introduced in most French families by the mid-80s (the terminal itself was free and gave free access (for 3 minutes actually) to a few services such as the French white-pages and yellow-pages).

Regarding technology, the Minitel includes an asymetrical half-duplex modem: 1200 bps in downstream, 75 (!) bps in upsteam. But an interesting particularity was that it could be reversed to get 75/1200 instead of 1200/75.

The minitel-1 included a 40 columns black & white screen, with an extended charset that was heavily used to simulate graphism!

Later, faster models were indroduced (9600 bps), including color-screen and 80 columns mode.

Re:Darpanet?

[Sycraft-fu]

This is true, however the Internet really did grow out of ARPAnet. The one big important thing to notice is the protocol it uses (TCP/IP) and the way it works (layered approach, interconnictivity across multiple platforms and lines). From what I gather on this Mintel is a closed system, that works based on a special kind of terminal and only uses modems for its communication.

Well the revolutionary thing about the Internet, that allowed it to grow so large, was not the idea of connecting computers together. You already had plenty of that, universities would have many system that would talk through serial or something like it, and you could dial into little mini-networks in the form of BBSes. The revolutionary thing was that it was all open and interoperable and could be made to work with anything on anything through anything.

You can dial in to an ISP with a modem using a Mac, he can connectot to his upstream provider with something archaaic like X.25, that provider can use POS fibre to connect to all his neighbours, who can connect with ATM to their neighbours, who can connect ot another ISP with frame relay, who can connect via DSL to a computer that is running FreeBSD and offering a web page.

That is what makes it so cool. YOu don't have to have one kind of terminal, you don't have to have one kind of OS, you don't have to have one kind of physical wiring. So long as your unit speakes IP, it is good to go. This made a really diverse network possable, and also ensured its survival. New technologies come out all the time, and they can be used on the Internet. You aren't restricted to one kind of line for transport.

That's why ARPAnet is the real father of the Internet, because that's where it all started. There were plenty of other closed system like Mintel like, say AOL. You dialed in with modems, talked to a proprietary, closed network. Great, like I said, just a big version of a BBS. With the Internet, all of a sudden you can just connect to a huge decentralized network, and anyone can connect with anything and basically do anything with it. You aren't limited to one kind of interface (like a text terminal), people can invent new apps to communicate and implement them.

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)

Amazon to sue Minitel?

[IainHere]

From the article:
One new venture for example, known as w-HA, is working on a scheme that will allow online payments to be made within two mouse clicks

Phew! For a second there, I thought they were in trouble.

It inspired Al Gore

[Anonymous Coward]

"'Calling Minitel a proto-internet may be a bit of a stretch, but it is not far off."

It has been said that Al Gore saw one of these when he visited Paris, and it inspired him to create the Internet when he got home.

Thank you, France! For the fries, and now for the 'Net!

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.

Hey, they solved the accessibility problem!

[ader]

> "...all of it determinedly low-graphics and designed for speed."

So when will the Internet be upgraded to support the same features?

Ade_
/

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?

porn on minitel

[lovebyte]

In the mid 80's I used to work during the summer in a bank in France. When suddenly all the computers went dead. No more network. The reason for this was that the minitel and the bank network were using the same lines and the minitel suddenly had a surge in communication. Why ? Because the first "minitel rose" services had appeared. The minitel rose was some rather expensive porn chat services and they became very popular.
So there you go. Internet, minitel, same thing.

Plus ca change, plus c'est pareil.

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 ....