By the time the Internet became big, Minitel was already very ingrained in french day to day life. Everyone knew the Internet was going to eventually win. But

By the time the Internet became big, Minitel was already very ingrained in french day to day life. Everyone knew the Internet was going to eventually win. But everyone also knew that it would take the Internet many many years before services matured, and became actually useful. While Minitel's technology was clearly lagging, it managed to provide a lot of very useful services that would take lots of money and work to replace. A rather good analogy would be the situation with credit cards in the US. The world has moved on to chip & pin (or contactless) while the US has stuck with magnetic stripe cards for an awfully long time