I agree that Minitel is a good source of income for some companies (and essentialy France Telecom). However the balance is more mitigated, because France Telecom lost billions of dollars of taxpayer's money between 1984 and 1990 for the inception of Minitel. And these last years benefits are only compensating these outrageous losses.
Last but not least, the Minitel is now more a constraint than a drive to the wide adoption of Internet in France : Although having roughtly 18 million users for Minitel (it's 1/3 of France population) we are lagging behind other EU countries for the Internet access.
France Telecom had never pushed forward the Internet for the reason mentionned early until recent years
Content is important on the Internet, but unfortunately, the major players in this area never pushed forward the Internet for the same reason
Most of the e-services are already available in France with the Minitel
Althoug sluggish on many aspects, Minitel is really PnP and reliable unlike some bloated OS
Cost of services are really expensive ($3 to $45 an hour), but the Minitel itself is free or may be leased for less than $10 a month. When you compare with the typical $1000 you need to purchase a PC, no wonder people may want to stick to it
This french "cultural exception" is certainly the reason why Yahoo! moved to the Minitel. To my mind it's a short-term tactical move because Minitel traffic is steadily decreasing of 6% per year since 1999. And I don't think that initiatives like iMinitel will be a success at all.
In fact the future for Minitel in France is... the Internet! we will see in the future more and more ASP providing Minitel over the Net allowing you to use your browser and an applet to connect yourself to online databases who want to stay on this antiquated system for revenue reasons.
It was exactly this kind of stuff 6 month ago :
there was a lot of noise about the discovery of gullies which were supposed to be the evidence of water
Then it happens they were not created by water but CO2 and wind erosion !
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I agree that Minitel is a good source of income for some companies (and essentialy France Telecom). However the balance is more mitigated, because France Telecom lost billions of dollars of taxpayer's money between 1984 and 1990 for the inception of Minitel. And these last years benefits are only compensating these outrageous losses.
Last but not least, the Minitel is now more a constraint than a drive to the wide adoption of Internet in France : Although having roughtly 18 million users for Minitel (it's 1/3 of France population) we are lagging behind other EU countries for the Internet access.
This french "cultural exception" is certainly the reason why Yahoo! moved to the Minitel. To my mind it's a short-term tactical move because Minitel traffic is steadily decreasing of 6% per year since 1999. And I don't think that initiatives like iMinitel will be a success at all.
In fact the future for Minitel in France is ... the Internet! we will see in the future more and more ASP providing Minitel over the Net allowing you to use your browser and an applet to connect yourself to online databases who want to stay on this antiquated system for revenue reasons.
It was exactly this kind of stuff 6 month ago :
there was a lot of noise about the discovery of gullies which were supposed to be the evidence of water
Then it happens they were not created by water but CO2 and wind erosion !