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France Ending Minitel Service

Posted by Soulskill on from the bits-of-history-of-bits dept.

New submitter pays-vert writes "On Saturday, France will turn off the Minitel service. A forerunner of the world wide web, Minitel provided news, online banking and, yes, porn via a chic plug'n'play terminal. The service remained massively popular for a while even after the rise of the Internet, but ultimately has lost out to technological innovation. 'About 400,000 of the machines are still in use across the country, but perhaps most affected will be Brittany, where the devices were developed, and where many farmers still depend on them. ... Internet service spread much more slowly in France than it did elsewhere in Europe or in the United States, largely because of the popularity of the Minitel, historians say. Only around the turn of the century did the Internet come to much of this soggy western region, an expanse of green that bulges out into the Atlantic Ocean. The Minitel was hugely useful to farmers. Realizing that the devices could save time and money, local agricultural organizations developed programs for farmers to, say, track pork prices, inform the authorities of animal births and deaths, or consult the results of chemical tests on milk.'"

4 of 137 comments (clear)

  1. The dead past by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Internet service spread much more slowly in France than it did elsewhere in Europe or in the United States, largely because of the popularity of the Minitel, historians say

    Now we consult historians to find out about the spread of the internet? That makes me feel old :(

    1. Re:The dead past by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      It's completely misleading. The Minitel was popular because there was no Internet. Then the internet was available, and it was not successful because you had to pay every minute of connection to France Telecom (monopoly, high prices) on top of the fee given to your provider.

      When I heard that local communications were free in the US, I couldn't believe it. It was really expensive in France up to the years 2000.

  2. Re:Going down kicking and screaming by hey_popey · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The fact that it was working just fine and the population liked and used it will be ignored for the brief moment that your comment is read.

    In that case, the fact that it was a horribly ugly and slow even compared to 56k Internet (compare it to an old black-and-white teletext) should also be ignored. I forgot to mention the outrageous charges, even to connect to public administration services; I remember myself waiting for some nation-wide exam results to display, the connection timer was the real source of stress, not the results!

  3. It was deployed in the US, too. by Animats · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It's not well known, but Minitel, the French system, was deployed in the US. Local dial-up ports were available in most US cities. The system was run by Telecom France, and gave access to both lightly used US services and the full network in France. I used to have an account on it. There was no extra charge for communicating across the Atlantic, so the service was useful to anyone who had people to talk to in France.

    Minitel had a delightful culture in some ways. People wrote poetry on the dating services.