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The End of Minitel

Posted by Hemos on

ZeldorBlat writes "The French Minitel service is closing it's doors at the end of today. Started in 1982, Minitel provides several services now widely available on the web including phone listings, train ticketing, and many other third-party content. Many prefered it to the web for it's simplicity and perceived security. The system is to be replaced with Le Compte Achats, available to businesses only. The notice can be found here."

3 of 39 comments (clear)

  1. That's too bad by Rosco+P.+Coltrane · · Score: 3, Interesting

    but I guess it was too expensive to maintain, so it had to happen.

    The Minitel systemi is slow, old and expensive, but it has one great redeeming quality that the internet doesn't have: it's basically a huge star-shaped network, with the only agent between the dumb terminal (the Minitel proper) and the service provider being France Telecom: FT operates the trunk lines, the last-mile lines (it's just the POTS) and the servers that manage the whole thing. So, what's great about that is, unless someone is tapping your phone line, or some well-placed FT employee is a thieve, there is no way in hell anybody can steal your personal information. As a result, it's an extremely secure way of doing business "online". What's more, you don't need a computer, Windows, anti-virus software and whatnot, so it's great for technophobic people.

    But I should say "was", since it is no more. Too bad...

    --
    "A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
  2. Wrong ! by alexhs · · Score: 4, Informative
    FTFNotice :

    To allow you to access to the Minitel services you need, in 2007, we suggest another of our products : Le Compte Achats. Minitel services haven't been closed, web-based "minitelfr" allowing access to Minitel services from the Internet has been. Minitel like BSD still is dying but not dead yet.
    --
    I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of killer sig, which this margin is too narrow to contain.
  3. The End?? by 4D6963 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Hold on, the end of the Minitel? Nothing less? Because when I look at the main Minitel page there is no such thing. Plus it seems to me that if the Minitel network would stop working I would have heard about it quite a lot from my family, on TV and I'm sure we would have returned the terminal to France Télécom, not to mention that the Slashdot article would have been edited.

    It rather seems that the news is rather about some particular online (on the web) service, not the end of the network itselves.

    --
    You just got troll'd!