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The article is very biased and for some points with factual errors: > This meant that even the poorest of households contained a set, subsidised by the taxpaye
by Loic 14y ago
The article is very biased and for some points with factual errors:
> This meant that even the poorest of households contained a set, subsidised by the taxpayer.
It was a freemium model, France Telecom was making a lot of money and was able to fund the Minitel without tax payer money. In fact, France Telecom was a cash cow for the government, not a single time took France Telecom money from the tax payers.
Also, my grand parents were able to use it, basically everybody could use it, the Internet took off extremely well in France across all the generations because it was possible to say: "this is like the Minitel, just type here the address, and there you go".
I did introduction courses to learn how to use Internet in the late 90's and for the 100's of people I helped, the Minitel analogy was perfect and allowed us to move forward extremely fast.
Edit: Thinking about it, this is the same model as the app store. To sell on the app store, you need to ask Apple first. You had to ask France Telecom at that time.
- 1gor 14y agoThinking about it, this is the same model as the app store. Here is an analogy with WWW vs. Minitel case. Does Apple allow multiple alternative app stores? If not, then Android should eventually make it obsolete, since you do not have to 'ask Google' to create and market a mobile app there.
- simonh 14y agoOnly if the barrier to entering the app store is high enough to prevent high quality apps getting into it. Furthermore if the app store barriers filter out poor quality apps and allow in high quality ones, then it actually adds value.
- JumpCrisscross 14y agoThis is BBC - I'd be slow to call them biased. »"not a single time took France Telecom money from the tax payers" France Telecom's capital investments provided by the government and cheap financing rates are forms of subsidy. Further, they get bailed out - last I remember is €9 billion in 2002 [1]. [1] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/2542297.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/2542297.stm
- Loic 14y ago2002 was way after the Minitel and it was after France Telecom financed France to meet the EU conditions to have the Euro. It was for about $7 billions in 1997[1]. And the BBC is biased, really, especially if you look at it from a non Western point of view. The thing is, you (and me) live in the Western capitalistic world, that is, we cannot assess easily the bias, because our references are including it. This is a very interesting topic but far too controversial to be discussed in the comments here. [1]http://www.nytimes.com/1996/09/20/news/20iht-euro.t.html http://www.nytimes.com/1996/09/20/news/20iht-euro.t.html
- atestu 14y agoBut France Telecom had a monopoly and was owned by the government. So… it was subsidized by the taxpayer in a way, or am I missing something?
- ernesth 14y agoAnother way to put it would be that the taxpayer was subsidized by France Telecom.
- Loic 14y agoFrance Telecom was a company which happens to have the government as shareholder. The company itself was making money by providing telecommunication services. As someone living in France, you did not had to pay France Telecom money if you were not using its services. France Telecom was only funded through invoicing customers. This is not the same than let say EDF, the French energy monopoly, where all the research to get nuclear energy was funded by the government through the CEA[1]. France Telecom had enough money to fully fund its research centres. They had in fact some of the best research labs. [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commissariat_%C3%A0_l%27%C3%89nergie_Atomique http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commissariat_%C3%A0_l%27%C3%89n...