And in UK we had Prestel, also ahead of its time but run by a telco and disrupted by the PC. I woz there, said the old Geezer
Minitel: The Online World France Built Before the Web (2017)
21–30 of 127 posts
Re: Minitel: The Online World France Built Before the Web (2017)
#22I remember being nearly murdered by my parents after they received the phone bill via the (physical, paper-based in those days :-) ) mail. The minitel promptly was locked out of reach of the family's children .... still, good days. They even had games! 36.15 ...
A little too much of 3615 ZAZA perhaps?
Re: Minitel: The Online World France Built Before the Web (2017)
#23If anything it was so far ahead of the early web that it hindered adoption of the WWW in France. It was incredibly good and rich, many services that could be used by non-technical people and had a built in monetization system for information providers. It took at least until 1996 before the web could compete and by that time France reluctantly started to let go of their beloved tiny terminals. It took until 2012 (!!)…
And it solved a problem I’d argue the internet hasn’t solved yet: how to charge users securely, easily and for small amounts. The way it did that is through your phone bill, since the minitel was using your phone line. No credit card number to enter (and be hacked), no credentials to enter. Of course it also meant kids had access to it…
Re: Minitel: The Online World France Built Before the Web (2017)
#24I remember being nearly murdered by my parents after they received the phone bill via the (physical, paper-based in those days :-) ) mail. The minitel promptly was locked out of reach of the family's children .... still, good days. They even had games! 36.15 ...
A little too much of 3615 ZAZA perhaps?
hah I wish I could have.
But... in hindsight ... no.
Teenage wet fantasies and all that :-)
Re: Minitel: The Online World France Built Before the Web (2017)
#25I remember back in the late 80s the SF BART stations used to have terminals for something similar to Minitel. It had crude color vector graphics and a menu based system. A little sluggish to since it was probably using modems. Mainly just BART and local information. I used to play with them while waiting for trains with my family.
Re: Minitel: The Online World France Built Before the Web (2017)
#26The Minitel was pretty nice. I saw one in 1989 on a trip to Paris. An important fact hinted at below is: you got the bill as part of your monthly phone bill. Probably the most common use, not all that interesting to us, was replacing 411 (remember that? I don't think that was the Information number in France.) Besides porn, it also had online dating.
The number was 12. It was discontinued in the early 2000 IIRC. You would call, get a human operator and could make complex queries like get the number of somebody you knew the sound of the name (but not the exact way of writing it) in a town or around a specific area, and the operator would help you find the number.
Also in France, 15 is medical services, 17 is the police and 18 are the firefighters. By calling 112 anywhere in Europe you'll get an English speaking operator that can dispatch any emergency service.
Re: Minitel: The Online World France Built Before the Web (2017)
#27A friend showed me Minitel in 1994, and I was half-surprised, half-not-surprised that even on this entirely text-based system, there was still porn (or at least, "visual erotica"). Human nature, eh?
The so-called "Minitel Rose" (all the erotica chat services) services were a cash cow for France Telecom, bringing in billions every year. Xavier Niel ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xavier_Niel ) started his empire with a sex oriented chat service.
Billions might be a little oversized.
Re: Minitel: The Online World France Built Before the Web (2017)
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
The so-called "Minitel Rose" (all the erotica chat services) services were a cash cow for France Telecom, bringing in billions every year. Xavier Niel ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xavier_Niel ) started his empire with a sex oriented chat service.
Billions might be a little oversized.
According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minitel :
In 1998, Minitel generated €832 million ($1,121 million) of revenue, of which €521 million was channelled by France Télécom to service providers.
Re: Minitel: The Online World France Built Before the Web (2017)
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
The so-called "Minitel Rose" (all the erotica chat services) services were a cash cow for France Telecom, bringing in billions every year. Xavier Niel ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xavier_Niel ) started his empire with a sex oriented chat service.
Billions might be a little oversized.
It's close if you count it in francs, and include all services. This article [0] says that France Telecome gave 700 M FRF to the operators, which means that 1,050 M FRF were collected in 1986 alone.
[0]
https://www.nouvelobs.com/tech/20170804.OBS3007/l-age-d-or-d...
Re: Minitel: The Online World France Built Before the Web (2017)
#30I’m surprised how little the histories of the web include the contribution of the French tech sector for DSL, the technology that made computer networks easy to expand to every house, and the general idea that the Internet could be a domestic technology. Until the late 80s, the Internet was a military and gradually academic tool, but even until the mid-90s, having an internet connection at home was quaint outside of…
> I’m surprised how little the histories of the web include the contribution of the French tech sector for DSL Do you mean for digital technologies or for specifically DSL? As I remember up to 1996 there was no commercial DSL in France, but there were excellent ISDN coverage (with rate up to 128kbits/sec with two channels). However it was quite expensive and when DSL was commercialized in France, it was cheaper at th…
regarding ATM and DSL - A lot of setups in Europe apparently used PPPoA, not PPPoE, meaning your DSL line integrated easily with the ATM network on the backbone from my understanding.