> All french citizen had a free minitel device (like a mini computer) Nitpicking: AFAIR, the Minitel was not "free" but rented - just like most ISPs in France

> All french citizen had a free minitel device (like a mini computer) Nitpicking: AFAIR, the Minitel was not "free" but rented - just like most ISPs in France today rent an ADSL modem-router. Also, the Minitel was not really a mini-computer but merely a screen, a keyboard and a modem in a single box. People could tell the difference with a computer, because at that time 8-bit micro-computers (Amstrad CPC, Commodore C64, ZX Sinclair, Atari ST, you name it) were not uncommon at home. > Now the only problem with State driven technological projects : Once it was delivered, Th french telecom did not continue to improve the system Actually, they did. The French Wikipedia page [1] is much more detailed than its English language counterpart. The latest model could display JPEG black-and-white images, and spoke at 9600bps (versus 1200bps for the first gen.). But it is true it was too little too late; it could not rival the multimedia PC/Modem combo that started to be affordable for the masses at that time. The (maybe?) too slow evolution of the tech probably had to more to do with the huge userbase and backwards compatibility issues than with "State driven tech projects" (BTW French civil nuclear power and high speed trains were for a long time "State driven tech" and are still alive and more-or-less kicking). Just like IPv4 seems to not want to die today. [1] https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minitel https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minitel