We got to see the Minitel in action last night. After our extremely tasty dinner of rabbit with mushrooms and peas, Lydie fired up the minitel terminal and looked up train schedules and hotel info for our stay in Arles. It's just a 1200 baud dumb terminal - it doesn't even have autodial. You dial your four-digit Minitel number to get a carrier, then hit the connect button on the terminal. It's essentially a giant France-wide BBS system.
People can advertise on it, or set up premium services that cost extra money to use.
There are primitive ANSI-type graphics that slow you down to a crawl, much like the web. In fact, it's much like the web, except for two things. All access is through France Telecom, and France has had it up and running for more than ten years. The US is behind. We need an Internet appliance, and WebTV ain't it.