Minitel
The Minitel was a videotex online service accessible through telephone lines, and was the world's most successful online service prior to the World Wide Web. It was invented in Cesson-Sévigné, near Rennes in Brittany, France. The service was rolled out experimentally on 15 July 1980 in Saint-Malo, France, and from autumn 1980 in other areas, and introduced commercially throughout France in 1982 by the PTT (Postes, Télégraphes et Téléphones; divided since 1991 between France Télécom and La Poste). From its early days, users could make online purchases, make train reservations, check stock prices, search the telephone  directory, have a mail box, and chat in a similar way to what is now made possible by the World Wide Web. In February 2009, France Télécom indicated the Minitel network still had 10 million monthly connections. France Télécom retired the service on 30 June 2012. Name. Officially TELETEL, the name Minitel is abbreviated from the French title of "Médium interactif par numérisation d'information téléphonique" (Interactive medium for digitized information by telephone). Business model. In 1978, Postes, Télégraphes et Téléphones, the French PTT organisation, began designing the Minitel network. By distributing terminals that could access a nationwide electronic directory of  telephone and address information, it hoped to increase use of the country's 23 million phone lines, and reduce the costs of printing printed phone books and employing directory assistance personnel. Millions of terminals were given for free (officially loans, and property of the PTT) to telephone subscribers. The telephone company emphasized ease of use; one observer wrote that "the Minitel terminal requires slightly more training than a toaster to operate". By offering a popular service on simple, free equipment, Minitel achieved high market penetration and avoided the chicken and the egg problem that prevented widespread adoption of such a  system in the United States. In exchange for the terminal, Minitel owners would only be given the yellow pages (classified commercial listings, with advertisements). The white pages were accessible for free on Minitel, and they could be searched much faster than flipping through a paper directory. According to the PTT, during the first eight years of nationwide operation 8 billion francs was spent on purchasing terminals, a profit of 3,5 billion francs was made after deduction of payments passed on to information providers such as newspapers, and an average of 500 million francs annually was saved by printing fewer phone  books. A trial with just 55 residential and business telephone customers using experimental terminals began in Saint-Malo on 15 July 1980, two days after 13 July presentation by Minitel to President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing. This expanded to 2,500 customers in other regions in autumn 1980. Starting in May 1981, 4,000 experimental terminals with a different design were distributed in Ille-et-Vilaine, and commercial service using Minitel terminals began in 1982. By early 1986 1.4 million terminals were connected to Minitel, with plans to distribute another million by the end of the year. To reduce opposition from newspapers worried  about competition from an electronic network, they were allowed to establish the first consumer services on Minitel. "Libération" offered 24-hour online news, such as results from events at the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles that occurred overnight in France. Providers advertised their own services in their own publications, which helped market the overall Minitel network. Others founded newspapers solely to create Minitel services. By 1988 three million terminals were installed, with 100,000 new units installed monthly. The telephone directory received 23 million calls monthly, with 40,000 updates daily. About 6,000 other services were available, with 250 added monthly . France Télécom estimated that almost 9 million terminals—including web-enabled personal computers (Windows, Mac OS, and Linux)—had access to the network at the end of 1999, and that it was used by 25 million people (of a total population of 60 million). Developed by 10,000 companies, in 1996, almost 26,000 different services were available. The telephone company only provided the white pages, otherwise building infrastructure for others to provide services. Minitel allowed access to various categories: The development of Minitel spawned the creation of many start-up companies in a manner similar to the later dot-com bubble of  World Wide Web-related companies. Similarly, many of those small companies floundered because of an overcrowded market or bad business practices (lack of infrastructure for online retailers). By 1985 games and electronic messaging were 42% of Minitel traffic, and messaging was 17% of traffic in 1988. "Messageries roses" ("pink messages", adult chat services hosted by operators pretending to be receptive women) were unexpectedly very popular, embarrassing government officials who preferred to discuss growing business usage of messaging. Widespread street advertising marketed services such as "3615 Sextel", "Jane", "kiss", "3615 penthouse", and "men". They and other pornographic sites were also criticized  for their possible access by minors. The government chose not to enact coercive measures, however, stating that the regulation of the online activities of children was up to parents, not the government. The government did, however, levy a tax on pornographic online services. Finances. Payment methods Users first subscribed to individual services, but traffic grew quickly after the telephone company offered a "kiosk" model (named after newsagent's shops). Minitel and voice charges appeared combined on the monthly telephone bill, with no breakout of fees. Service providers received two-thirds of the $10 an hour that customers typically paid  as of 1988. As the telephone company handled bill collection, and users who did not pay bills lost telephone service, the customer acquisition cost for service providers was low. The single bill encouraged impulse shopping, in which users intending to use one service found and used others while browsing. As users' identities and services were anonymous, Minitel use was high at work where companies paid for telephone service. In 1985 France Télécom earned 620 million francs (approximately $70 million) from Minitel. 2,000 private companies earned 289 million francs (about $35 million) during the year; "Libération" earned 2.5 million  francs (about $300,000) from the service in September. In the late 1990s, Minitel connections were stable at 100 million a month plus 150 million online directory inquiries, in spite of growing use of the World Wide Web. In 1998, Minitel generated €832 million ($1,121 million) of revenue, of which €521 million was channelled by France Télécom to service providers. Minitel sales in the late 1990s accounted for almost 15% of sales at La Redoute and 3 Suisses, France's biggest mail order companies. In 2005, the most popular Minitel application was Teleroute, the online real-time  freight exchange, which accounted for nearly 8% of Minitel usage. In December 1985 Minitel users made more than 22 million calls, up 400% in one year. In 1994 they made 1,913 million Minitel calls, used the system for 110 million hours, and spent 6.6 billion francs. In 2005, there were 351 million calls for 18.5 million hours of connection, generating €206 million of revenue, of which €145 million were redistributed to 2,000 service providers (these numbers were declining at around 30% per year). There were still six million terminals owned by France Télécom, which had been left with  their users in order to avoid recycling problems. The main uses were banking and financial services, which benefit from Minitel's security features, and access to professional databases. France Télécom mentions, as an example of usage, that 12 million updates to personal "carte vitale" health-care cards were made through Minitel. In 2007, revenue was well over $100 million. In 2010, €30 million in revenues with 85% of those revenues going to service providers. Phonebook. The most popular service of the Minitel was the "Annuaire Electronique"; in 1985 about half of the calls on the network were to  it. In May of that year a white pages directory for all 24 million telephone subscribers nationwide became available. It was accessible through the phone number 11; on 18 October 1996 (new French numbering system adopted), the access to the phone directory changed to 3611. Companies could add up to 3 lines of complementary information and a "prehistoric" website. Ads to the Minitel phone directory were sold by ODA (Office d'Annonces), today Solocal / Pages Jaunes Groupe in Sèvres France. In 1991, the "Minitel Website" for the Paris Sony Stores contained already over 100 pages. Today the 3611 Minitel Directory is  replaced by the online white or yellow pages. On 11 February 2009, France Télécom and PagesJaunes announced that they were to cancel plans to end the Minitel service in March 2009. Its directory assistance service was still being accessed over a million times a month. This was before France Télécom retired the service on 30 June 2012, on account of operational cost and fewer customers due to lack of interest. Technology. Minitel used computer terminals consisting of a text-only monochrome screen, a keyboard and a modem, packaged into a single tabletop unit. Minitel terminals could display rudimentary graphics using  a set of predefined block graphics characters. Color units were later available for a fee, but remained seldom-used. Aftermarket printers were available. Minitel used the existing Transpac network, but its popularity caused problems for the network's commercial users. After a severe disruption in June 1985, France Télécom separated business traffic from Télétel, dedicated to the Minitel service. When connecting, the Minitel's integrated modem generally dialed a short code number connecting to a PAVI ("Point d'Accès VIdéotexte", "videotext access point") from the subscriber's analog telephone line. The PAVI in turn connected digitally via Transpac to the destination  servers of the appropriate company or administration. In France the most common dial number was "3615", while "3617" was used by more expensive services. Minitel services names were often prefixed with this number to identify them as such. Billboard ads at the time often consisted of nothing more than an image, a company name, and a "3615" number; the fact that a Minitel service was being advertised was then clear by implication, similarly to the use of ".com" for later web services. Minitel used a half-duplex asymmetric data transmission via its modem. It downlinked at 1200 bit/s (9  KB/min) and uplinked at 75 bit/s (0.6 KB/min). This allowed fast downloads, for the time. The system, which came to be known as "1275" was more correctly known as V.23. This system had been developed for general-purpose data communications, but was most commonly used for Minitel and equivalent services around the world. Technically, "Minitel" refers to the terminals, while the network is known as Télétel. Minitel terminals use the AZERTY keyboard most commonly used in France (as opposed to the QWERTY keyboard more common in the English-speaking world). Minitel and the Internet. The extent to  which Minitel enhanced or hindered the development of the Internet in France is widely debated. On the one hand, it included more than a thousand services, some of which predicted common applications on the modern Internet. For example, in 1986, French university students coordinated a national strike using Minitel, demonstrating an early use of digital communication devices for participatory technopolitical ends. Alternatively, the French government's attachment to the natively developed Minitel may have slowed the adoption of the Internet in France; in the 1990s there was a peak of nine million terminals and there were still 810,000 terminals in  the country in 2012. In the short term, some resources at France Telecom (now Orange) were dedicated to the development of Minitel that might have otherwise been focused on Internet development. However, France Telecom's focus on Minitel had little or no long-term effect on adoption or development of internet- and web-based companies in France; France ranks roughly equal to the US and Germany in the current penetration of high-speed internet in households.