[ih] Minitel (was: Re: OSI and alternate realiv )

[Brian E Carpenter]

A perfect explanation, Olivier. The attitude of FT that you
describe was exactly my experience.

I had enough French colleagues and residents of nearby France in
my group at CERN that we had to look seriously at Minitel, but it
quickly became clear that its dependency on Videotex and on a single
monopoly carrier made it a non-starter.

On the other hand, it clearly demonstrated many use cases for
the Web among the general public, and that was useful.

Regards
    Brian Carpenter

On 18-Mar-24 11:30, Olivier MJ Crépin-Leblond via Internet-history wrote:
> 
> 
> On 16/03/2024 22:17, Bob Purvy via Internet-history wrote:
>> Even when they actually*had*  the future up and running, they spurned it:
>>
>> Minitel. It caught on, the French loved it, and the PTT still failed to
>> capitalize on it.
> 
> France Telecom made an absolute killing with it - with hundreds of
> millions of yearly revenue for several years. The main asset (initially)
> which eventually turned into a disadvantage was that it was using
> Videotex, a display technology that was invented in the 70s which
> allowed for rudimentary graphics at a low cost.
> When the World Wide Web arrived, its display capabilities vastly
> overwhelmed the capabilities of Minitel, besides it being much cheaper
> to use the Internet than Minitel. As people started owning computers,
> software for connecting to Minitel was flimsy and connecting to Minitel
> services at 1200/75 baud was flimsy and unreliable since the most
> commonly used modem was US Robotics which evolved from Courier ->
> Courier HST -> Sportster going from V.32 to V.90.
> 
> But the people at France Telecom still thought Minitel was better than
> Internet. I had a private meeting at 103 Rue de Grenelle, France
> Telecom's Headquarters in Paris, in 1997, where the heads of France
> Telecom, TransPac and VTCOM (the multimedia arm of France Telecom at the
> time) laughed at my presentation in relation to the Internet because "it
> is in English, people need a computer and it is not sustainable" - with
> the joke being "you are kidding yourself if you can make money with
> something that you are giving for free" - the open joke being on "Les
> Américains" who were obviously going to hit a brick wall and come back
> to a more sustainable model like Minitel.
> 
> They only understood that Minitel had lived its day in 2012. By then all
> the people I had spoken to had retired. I guess Minitel did live longer
> than I expected.
> 
> Kindest regards,
> 
> Olivier