[BRIEF NOTE] On the end of the Minitel

[rfmcdonald]

This image, featured in the Les Échos article "France Télécom a débranché son Minitel" ("France Telecom Has Unplugged Its Minitel") by Solveig Godeluck, shows the growth in usage of the pioneering French Minitel network from 1984 through to its formal shutdown at the end of the 31st of June, 2012.

It's certain that the small vintage console, with its brown buttons and giant pixels, left a big impact on society. Minitel, with its entire ecosystem (applications, payments platform, built-in network) inspired the U.S. Vice President Al Gore when he delivered his famous speech on the "Information Superhighway" in the 1990s. The French experience did not escape NTT Docomo, the Japanese mobile operator who invented the iMode, and even Apple with iTunes. Steve Jobs had in fact his own Minitel, given to him by the Frenchman Jean-Louis Gassée.

Jean-Paul Maury, "Mr. Minitel" of the Directorate General of Telecommunications (ancestor of France Télécom), said that France was "well ahead" in computer systems in the 1980s: "The display of colors in JPEG format was invented in France for the Minitel. Similarly, our power supply inspired the USB of today." Jean-Paul Maury fights against the idea that the Minitel delayed the changeover to the Internet in France: "Instead, it gave us an advance of twenty years. At one point we were the only ones with an electronic directory, banking, information in real time when France Info didn't exist! " The father of Minitel concedes that the country lost its lead, first, because the United States capitalized on their vast domestic market to conquer the world with their PCs. These worked everywhere, while each European country built its own standard of Minitel.

Then, in France the liberalization of telecoms terminated the plans for public investment. "From the outset, we planned to distribute 30 million Minitel terminals," said Jean-Paul Maury. At the time, France Telecom was connecting 2 million homes per year to phone lines, for 5000 to 6000 francs each. He was not underestimating the cost of adding Minitel connections: "The terminal costing 1000 francs was included in the CHF 100 billion plan to catch up the phone! "

In thirty years, the centralized system which counted up to 25 million users brought in billions of euros. France Telecom says modestly that "tens of millions of euros" were earned in 2011 for the hundreds of businesses still using the platform, and "several million" for the telecom operator itself.

The Twitter hashtag #ripminitel carries links to various people's reactions to the end of the platform.