4 ms·

It was not totally centralized technically. You could host your own full service, using your own modem banks and servers. The drawback was that you would not be

It was not totally centralized technically. You could host your own full service, using your own modem banks and servers. The drawback was that you would not be discoverable in the minitel directory and you would not get the billing system etc. People needed to know your phone number and dial it to connect. Minitel took a long time to die because it was a cash cow, both for France Telecom and service providers. The economic model was very simple: users pay the time spent online, and the revenue is shared between the telco and the service provider. No ads, no tracking ;) It was also successful because every household got a Minitel for free in the mid-80's, when personal computers were very uncommon. And if you had a computer, you could use the Minitel as an external model with a serial port adapter and reach BBSes! Because of that I once had to explain to my parents why I was spending hours calling a number in Germany, which was not a cheap thing :P

glandium 9y ago
When I was in middle school, I was participating in a meteorological club, and we had such a minitel server. People from around could phone in with their minitel, and get the information we'd put there for them. The few kids in the club collected data from a small weather station, compiled it, and put it there. We'd also sometimes redesign the presentation of the minitel "site". We were coached by a maths teacher, and that was part of what got me into computers (I had an Oric Atmos at home, the club was the first time I had access to PCs (with Windows 2! But we'd most usually run DOS); we had access to some Thomson MO5 in primary school before that).
- astrobe_ 9y ago
  IIRC some variants of the Minitel had a RS232 port. I've seen it used to program alarm systems on site.
  - fabrice_d 9y ago
    Even the Minitel 1 had a rs232 port, on a non standard connector. Super slow though, 75/1200 bauds :)
  - glandium 9y ago
    IIRC, all the minitels above and including the 1B had a serial port, but it was through a DIN connector. We were using that to test our "site" by feeding it directly from a PC. I'm not sure the Minitel 1 had one.
  - fermigier 9y ago
    30 year ago, I hooked my mother's Minitel to my Atari 800 XL's joystick port, using (IIRC) a couple of transistors on a breadboard, and a software serial interface that probably consisted of a few tens of lines of assembly. This was the summit of my hardware career ;)
    - jacquesm 9y ago
      That's more than most programmers.
dorfsmay 9y ago
> every household got a Minitel for free People got minitels (available for free) because phone books were eliminated, so even people not interested by the online world (shopping, train/flight reservations, dating "sites", high school diploma results, weather forecast, etc...), would get one in order to be able to look up phone numbers.
- wott 9y ago
  Phone books were not eliminated. Minitel gave you access to the phone numbers in the whole country, whereas phone books were limited to your department (for foreigners: France is divided in about 100 departments).
  - BrandoElFollito 9y ago
    Phonebooks ARE not eliminated. I got one last year (it was a pile outside and one could grab one).
  - dorfsmay 9y ago
    Seems correct - weird, I was sure this was the case... They are eliminating the white pages only now: https://www.nextinpact.com/news/98960-les-annuaires-pagesblanches-ne-seront-plus-distribues-a-partir-2018.htm https://www.nextinpact.com/news/98960-les-annuaires-pagesbla... So it was only hosehold with a minitel that stopped receiving white pages: "les foyers équipés de Minitel ne recevaient plus que les pages jaunes" (Homes with Minitel received the yellow pages only) http://obligement.free.fr/articles/histoire_minitel.php http://obligement.free.fr/articles/histoire_minitel.php
    - bigbugbag 9y ago
      You ll find more about the minitel history here: http://www.inaglobal.fr/telecoms/article/du-minitel-linterne http://www.inaglobal.fr/telecoms/article/du-minitel-linterne
- bigbugbag 9y ago
  You got it wrong. To get a minitel without paying for it you had to opt out of receiving the local white pages phone book. Minitel costs was marginally recouped by saving on printing and recycling phone books and mostly by paid services. The white pages phone book was still around last year. Also with 6.5 millions minitel owners at peak in 1993 we were far from every household having one.
bigbugbag 9y ago
The minitel was centralized technically as in dumb terminals connecting to a smart server[1]. Everyone wanting to connect to your own hosted full service would have to connect to a central point: your own hosted full service. But there was one service, 3618 or service MIAMI, that allowed direct connection minitel to minitel but this was using a different network and stayed available 2 years after the minitel network was shut down. The economic model was definitely not what you said, there was a wide range of possibilities: fully free (3623), free with a time limitation (3611), paid for by the service provider (3613), paid for by the user with no money for the service provider (3614), paid by the word (3656 to send a telegram), paid by the user with money split with the service provider a.k.a. kiosk debuting in 1984 (3615), overcharged services (3617, 3628, 3629). Some had a fixed costs at connection. Ads were a thing minitel services, from a simple banner to a full page interstitial graphics that you had to wait a little while for it to load. Tracking also though much less elaborated and certainly not exploited the way it is today. Minitel was not given to all for free, it was offered for a limited time to people in exchange for opting out of receiving the free local white pages phone book, this economic model of giving away the terminal and recouping the costs through services prices was much criticized but has now become common (printer, smartphones, ...). Then you could either rent or buy a minitel, usually a more evolved version. The use of the minitel was mostly the phone directory, buying train tickets and erotic messaging. The kiosk where the service provider get its share of the money made the minitel successful. Among services were 3615 internet to connect to the internet with your minitel which paid for altern.org and ultimately lead to gandi.fr, also notable is Xavier Niels who debuted his career to becoming the billionaire behind free.fr and proxad.net as a high schooler with a minitel erotic messaging service. To get deeper see this INA article[2]. [1]: This is the basis of the famous talk "internet or minitel 2.0" from 10 years ago about the evolution of internet https://www.fdn.fr/actions/confs/internet-libre-ou-minitel-2-0/ https://www.fdn.fr/actions/confs/internet-libre-ou-minitel-2... [2]: http://www.inaglobal.fr/telecoms/article/du-minitel-linterne http://www.inaglobal.fr/telecoms/article/du-minitel-linterne

glandium 9y ago

When I was in middle school, I was participating in a meteorological club, and we had such a minitel server. People from around could phone in with their minitel, and get the information we'd put there for them. The few kids in the club collected data from a small weather station, compiled it, and put it there. We'd also sometimes redesign the presentation of the minitel "site". We were coached by a maths teacher, and that was part of what got me into computers (I had an Oric Atmos at home, the club was the first time I had access to PCs (with Windows 2! But we'd most usually run DOS); we had access to some Thomson MO5 in primary school before that).

astrobe_ 9y ago
IIRC some variants of the Minitel had a RS232 port. I've seen it used to program alarm systems on site.
- fabrice_d 9y ago
  Even the Minitel 1 had a rs232 port, on a non standard connector. Super slow though, 75/1200 bauds :)
- glandium 9y ago
  IIRC, all the minitels above and including the 1B had a serial port, but it was through a DIN connector. We were using that to test our "site" by feeding it directly from a PC. I'm not sure the Minitel 1 had one.
- fermigier 9y ago
  30 year ago, I hooked my mother's Minitel to my Atari 800 XL's joystick port, using (IIRC) a couple of transistors on a breadboard, and a software serial interface that probably consisted of a few tens of lines of assembly. This was the summit of my hardware career ;)
  - jacquesm 9y ago
    That's more than most programmers.

dorfsmay 9y ago

> every household got a Minitel for free People got minitels (available for free) because phone books were eliminated, so even people not interested by the online world (shopping, train/flight reservations, dating "sites", high school diploma results, weather forecast, etc...), would get one in order to be able to look up phone numbers.

wott 9y ago
Phone books were not eliminated. Minitel gave you access to the phone numbers in the whole country, whereas phone books were limited to your department (for foreigners: France is divided in about 100 departments).
- BrandoElFollito 9y ago
  Phonebooks ARE not eliminated. I got one last year (it was a pile outside and one could grab one).
- dorfsmay 9y ago
  Seems correct - weird, I was sure this was the case... They are eliminating the white pages only now: https://www.nextinpact.com/news/98960-les-annuaires-pagesblanches-ne-seront-plus-distribues-a-partir-2018.htm https://www.nextinpact.com/news/98960-les-annuaires-pagesbla... So it was only hosehold with a minitel that stopped receiving white pages: "les foyers équipés de Minitel ne recevaient plus que les pages jaunes" (Homes with Minitel received the yellow pages only) http://obligement.free.fr/articles/histoire_minitel.php http://obligement.free.fr/articles/histoire_minitel.php
  - bigbugbag 9y ago
    You ll find more about the minitel history here: http://www.inaglobal.fr/telecoms/article/du-minitel-linterne http://www.inaglobal.fr/telecoms/article/du-minitel-linterne
bigbugbag 9y ago
You got it wrong. To get a minitel without paying for it you had to opt out of receiving the local white pages phone book. Minitel costs was marginally recouped by saving on printing and recycling phone books and mostly by paid services. The white pages phone book was still around last year. Also with 6.5 millions minitel owners at peak in 1993 we were far from every household having one.

bigbugbag 9y ago

The minitel was centralized technically as in dumb terminals connecting to a smart server[1]. Everyone wanting to connect to your own hosted full service would have to connect to a central point: your own hosted full service. But there was one service, 3618 or service MIAMI, that allowed direct connection minitel to minitel but this was using a different network and stayed available 2 years after the minitel network was shut down. The economic model was definitely not what you said, there was a wide range of possibilities: fully free (3623), free with a time limitation (3611), paid for by the service provider (3613), paid for by the user with no money for the service provider (3614), paid by the word (3656 to send a telegram), paid by the user with money split with the service provider a.k.a. kiosk debuting in 1984 (3615), overcharged services (3617, 3628, 3629). Some had a fixed costs at connection. Ads were a thing minitel services, from a simple banner to a full page interstitial graphics that you had to wait a little while for it to load. Tracking also though much less elaborated and certainly not exploited the way it is today. Minitel was not given to all for free, it was offered for a limited time to people in exchange for opting out of receiving the free local white pages phone book, this economic model of giving away the terminal and recouping the costs through services prices was much criticized but has now become common (printer, smartphones, ...). Then you could either rent or buy a minitel, usually a more evolved version. The use of the minitel was mostly the phone directory, buying train tickets and erotic messaging. The kiosk where the service provider get its share of the money made the minitel successful. Among services were 3615 internet to connect to the internet with your minitel which paid for altern.org and ultimately lead to gandi.fr, also notable is Xavier Niels who debuted his career to becoming the billionaire behind free.fr and proxad.net as a high schooler with a minitel erotic messaging service. To get deeper see this INA article[2]. [1]: This is the basis of the famous talk "internet or minitel 2.0" from 10 years ago about the evolution of internet https://www.fdn.fr/actions/confs/internet-libre-ou-minitel-2-0/ https://www.fdn.fr/actions/confs/internet-libre-ou-minitel-2... [2]: http://www.inaglobal.fr/telecoms/article/du-minitel-linterne http://www.inaglobal.fr/telecoms/article/du-minitel-linterne