
Minitel: The rise and fall of the France-wide web - 1gor
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-18610692
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Loic
The article is very biased and for some points with factual errors:

> This meant that even the poorest of households contained a set, subsidised
> by the taxpayer.

It was a freemium model, France Telecom was making a lot of money and was able
to fund the Minitel without tax payer money. In fact, France Telecom was a
cash cow for the government, not a single time took France Telecom money from
the tax payers.

Also, my grand parents were able to use it, basically everybody could use it,
the Internet took off extremely well in France across all the generations
because it was possible to say: "this is like the Minitel, just type here the
address, and there you go".

I did introduction courses to learn how to use Internet in the late 90's and
for the 100's of people I helped, the Minitel analogy was perfect and allowed
us to move forward extremely fast.

Edit: Thinking about it, this is the same model as the app store. To sell on
the app store, you need to ask Apple first. You had to ask France Telecom at
that time.

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atestu
But France Telecom had a monopoly and was owned by the government.

So… it was subsidized by the taxpayer in a way, or am I missing something?

~~~
Loic
France Telecom was a company which happens to have the government as
shareholder. The company itself was making money by providing
telecommunication services. As someone living in France, you did not had to
pay France Telecom money if you were not using its services. France Telecom
was only funded through invoicing customers.

This is not the same than let say EDF, the French energy monopoly, where all
the research to get nuclear energy was funded by the government through the
CEA[1]. France Telecom had enough money to fully fund its research centres.
They had in fact some of the best research labs.

[1]:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commissariat_%C3%A0_l%27%C3%89n...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commissariat_%C3%A0_l%27%C3%89nergie_Atomique)

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da_n
I think this whole Minitel story is fascinating and should be used as an
example of why a free and open internet is always necessary. This shows what
happens when you have a locked-down, closed system controlled by private
companies and government. There was no room to allow innovation, stagnating
until the www put the nail into its coffin.

~~~
1gor
I wonder if Facebook will be tomorrow's Minitel...

But seriously, why some network system layers failed and others thrived? It is
not protocol. Gopher was also TCP/IP based, and it has disappeared...

~~~
allardschip
I think you can safely say it is today's Minitel for many.

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alx
Webcam for minitel: [http://tetalab.org/blog/update-webcam-pour-
minitel-%C3%A7a-m...](http://tetalab.org/blog/update-webcam-pour-
minitel-%C3%A7a-manquait)

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agumonkey
Talking about France lack of insights toward networking, checkout Louis Pouzin
work. His work was among the first using datagrams. Ironically it was pulled
down for various reasons in Europe.

