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Minitel: what should have been a cautionary tale. Allowing "service providers" to charge money for every last little thing anyone does on a service results in,

Minitel: what should have been a cautionary tale. Allowing "service providers" to charge money for every last little thing anyone does on a service results in, first a race to the bottom, as prices are compared. Second, a rush to ways to generate extra revenue through various irritating and scammy ways (the Yellow pages were full, and I do mean to the brim, of scams, same for the "porn" (mostly text or chat based, some very creative "graphical" stuff), ...). Then those scams become so pervasive that trust in the system is completely lost, which makes it useless. Three, rapid mass abandonment when even a lower quality "free" alternative becomes available (internet over slow modems, hell, even BBSes posed a serious challenge to minitel). The thing people always forget to mention is that minitel was metered. Every second you spent on minitel was charged, with some part of that charge shared with the content provider. There were also content providers (ie. "webshops") that paid for the customers to be able to be on their site for free. The reaction to increased scams ? Why France Telecom stared charging more, of course, making the scams worse ... and worse ... and worse. Then suddenly all was abandoned in 2003 or so, with only paid-for sites remaining (essentially web banking, and some stock broker type stuff that's similar but more complex than web banking). Of course, the whole exercise was repeated with "value added services" on Cell phones in the late 90s and early 2000s (also charged by the "time spent online", and also filled to the brim with scams), and now again with android and iphone.

Jraf 9y ago
Hi, i disagree. A (dumb) terminal in each french house. For free ! in the 80's! As we had one in every house, there was "online" services which were very popular. Like school registration and ordering. And nationwide yellow pages! 24/7 ! Without the need to get to the post office to check for the county directory, on opening hours . It was also a wonderful tool to connect people in communities. There was different rate charge and the cheapest were very low. I remember spending nights and nights chatting. https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/RTEL https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/RTEL
- hazeii 9y ago
  Then, of course, there were the messageries roses (translated roughly as 'pink message areas' - adults only, of course!).
blowski 9y ago
Where there's brass, there's muck. I doubt it's even possible to create a system that's universally useful while not being susceptible to scams and all the other crappy bits of humanity.
- duncan_bayne 9y ago
  Sure there is! It's actually pretty easy. Just send me the shipping costs by wire transfer and I'll post you a book that explains how.
buserror 9y ago
I used to work as a system's engineer for the biggest service provider of the minitel era, back in 1989+. MOST of the services were for professionals -- in fact the biggest by far for volume and revenue was a transport exchange for lorries... There were a few 'pink services' (can't call that porn really, it was just chatbots with (sometimes!) real 'hostesses') as mentioned, but they were nowhere near the biggest. The biggest after the lorry service were sport services (Stade 2 etc during footy times or Tour de France) -- then .gov stuff and education (exam results). I think for most people the 'pink services' were the ones that were advertised most, therefore there is a bias as to what was used and popular at the time, but from my point of view, it was nowhere near as popular as what people believe. For the technically minded, we were running a (lot) of Pr1me computers running Primos -- in fact we were their primary customers before they died; we eventually moved on to HPUX on the very first PA-RISC that came out. The Pr1mes continued ticking along for a long while...
- candiodari 9y ago
  What happened to the thousands of miscellaneous services that were at one point provided ? What I mean to say is that minitel was in an incredible position to grow and be a massive platform, worth 3 digit billions of dollars, and instead traded this potential for charging for every second. This pushed all the random services (granted, mostly chat, and forum like things) that were cool at one point off off it, and first onto BBS'es, then the internet came with some free server space included in virtually every internet package. A lot of these were initially let on the platform, then bled dry, and died. But minitel, without a doubt, could instead have pushed those services, and could have made it easy and cheap to host one of them, a decade before the internet arrived and it would have spread like wildfire instead of the internet, sooner, faster and with a few upgrades maybe even better. Instead, it charged by the second, made maybe 100 million euros total profit and died without any evolution at all. Because of France Telecom's business practices, everything on it was bled dry and was always losing money. And FT is a monopolist, they just bleed their services dry, and when they die, no replacement is forthcoming. At least things like Amazon have the decency to still offer the service when they destroy their supplyers. FT, however, just destroys. And it was all for nothing. Despite forcing these charges, it has (well, had, these days) a reputation in the financial industry for being a place where sometimes interesting companies become shady, then die. All killed in the name of France Telecom's business model, and nonexistent profits, just so it could do it's charge-by-the-second thing (perhaps you can notice that I'm not a fan of telcos). Just so all the "profit" could go to France Telecom and nobody else could maintain a living on it. Minitel is the ultimate example of France Telecom's economic sabotage : a massive monopolist that just couldn't stomach other people profiting even a bit of their platform and ending up destroying the market it had a monopoly over, all because of management incompetence, intransigence and utter indifference. It's not just that they didn't see the opportunity, as that requires looking for opportunities in the first place : they just didn't care. FT management is a reward position you get when some important politician owes you a favor, which makes it a given that high level managers are utterly incompetent, because either they are incompetent, or they're not incompetent and are aware that it's a favor : their days are numbered before they start, so they bleed the position for all it's worth and spend their time elsewhere.
M_Bakhtiari 9y ago
>Minitel: what should have been a cautionary tale. Allowing "service providers" to charge money for every last little thing anyone does on a service Which reminds me, that's also one of the rules of Project Xanadu: http://xanadu.com.au/general/faq.html#2 http://xanadu.com.au/general/faq.html#2 I wonder if that had turned out the same way had it ever been completed (or shall I say whether it will turn out the same way if it's ever completed?)
- walshemj 9y ago
  yep that's why services that charged for every last thing didn't take off
digi_owl 9y ago
The early days of European internet was similarly metered. Very few nations had anything like the US system of local calls being free. Only with the advent of DSL etc did flat fee net connections become "common".
- candiodari 9y ago
  But minitel was different, the charge depended on the site you were on, and to some extent the charge was shared with the site. All sites on minitel were like premium-rate phone numbers, differently priced ones.
  - digi_owl 9y ago
    So something akin to BBSs with a central registry?
    - candiodari 9y ago
      Something like the BBSes on premium numbers.

Jraf 9y ago

Hi, i disagree. A (dumb) terminal in each french house. For free ! in the 80's! As we had one in every house, there was "online" services which were very popular. Like school registration and ordering. And nationwide yellow pages! 24/7 ! Without the need to get to the post office to check for the county directory, on opening hours . It was also a wonderful tool to connect people in communities. There was different rate charge and the cheapest were very low. I remember spending nights and nights chatting. https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/RTEL https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/RTEL

hazeii 9y ago
Then, of course, there were the messageries roses (translated roughly as 'pink message areas' - adults only, of course!).

blowski 9y ago

Where there's brass, there's muck. I doubt it's even possible to create a system that's universally useful while not being susceptible to scams and all the other crappy bits of humanity.

duncan_bayne 9y ago
Sure there is! It's actually pretty easy. Just send me the shipping costs by wire transfer and I'll post you a book that explains how.

buserror 9y ago

I used to work as a system's engineer for the biggest service provider of the minitel era, back in 1989+. MOST of the services were for professionals -- in fact the biggest by far for volume and revenue was a transport exchange for lorries... There were a few 'pink services' (can't call that porn really, it was just chatbots with (sometimes!) real 'hostesses') as mentioned, but they were nowhere near the biggest. The biggest after the lorry service were sport services (Stade 2 etc during footy times or Tour de France) -- then .gov stuff and education (exam results). I think for most people the 'pink services' were the ones that were advertised most, therefore there is a bias as to what was used and popular at the time, but from my point of view, it was nowhere near as popular as what people believe. For the technically minded, we were running a (lot) of Pr1me computers running Primos -- in fact we were their primary customers before they died; we eventually moved on to HPUX on the very first PA-RISC that came out. The Pr1mes continued ticking along for a long while...

candiodari 9y ago
What happened to the thousands of miscellaneous services that were at one point provided ? What I mean to say is that minitel was in an incredible position to grow and be a massive platform, worth 3 digit billions of dollars, and instead traded this potential for charging for every second. This pushed all the random services (granted, mostly chat, and forum like things) that were cool at one point off off it, and first onto BBS'es, then the internet came with some free server space included in virtually every internet package. A lot of these were initially let on the platform, then bled dry, and died. But minitel, without a doubt, could instead have pushed those services, and could have made it easy and cheap to host one of them, a decade before the internet arrived and it would have spread like wildfire instead of the internet, sooner, faster and with a few upgrades maybe even better. Instead, it charged by the second, made maybe 100 million euros total profit and died without any evolution at all. Because of France Telecom's business practices, everything on it was bled dry and was always losing money. And FT is a monopolist, they just bleed their services dry, and when they die, no replacement is forthcoming. At least things like Amazon have the decency to still offer the service when they destroy their supplyers. FT, however, just destroys. And it was all for nothing. Despite forcing these charges, it has (well, had, these days) a reputation in the financial industry for being a place where sometimes interesting companies become shady, then die. All killed in the name of France Telecom's business model, and nonexistent profits, just so it could do it's charge-by-the-second thing (perhaps you can notice that I'm not a fan of telcos). Just so all the "profit" could go to France Telecom and nobody else could maintain a living on it. Minitel is the ultimate example of France Telecom's economic sabotage : a massive monopolist that just couldn't stomach other people profiting even a bit of their platform and ending up destroying the market it had a monopoly over, all because of management incompetence, intransigence and utter indifference. It's not just that they didn't see the opportunity, as that requires looking for opportunities in the first place : they just didn't care. FT management is a reward position you get when some important politician owes you a favor, which makes it a given that high level managers are utterly incompetent, because either they are incompetent, or they're not incompetent and are aware that it's a favor : their days are numbered before they start, so they bleed the position for all it's worth and spend their time elsewhere.

M_Bakhtiari 9y ago

>Minitel: what should have been a cautionary tale. Allowing "service providers" to charge money for every last little thing anyone does on a service Which reminds me, that's also one of the rules of Project Xanadu: http://xanadu.com.au/general/faq.html#2 http://xanadu.com.au/general/faq.html#2 I wonder if that had turned out the same way had it ever been completed (or shall I say whether it will turn out the same way if it's ever completed?)

walshemj 9y ago
yep that's why services that charged for every last thing didn't take off

digi_owl 9y ago

The early days of European internet was similarly metered. Very few nations had anything like the US system of local calls being free. Only with the advent of DSL etc did flat fee net connections become "common".

candiodari 9y ago
But minitel was different, the charge depended on the site you were on, and to some extent the charge was shared with the site. All sites on minitel were like premium-rate phone numbers, differently priced ones.
- digi_owl 9y ago
  So something akin to BBSs with a central registry?
  - candiodari 9y ago
    Something like the BBSes on premium numbers.