Minitel and Videotex
Penn Mackintosh
In 1995, the French Transpac network was the world’s largest telecommunications network (Schiller, 1996). This system was thoroughly modernized, with exclusively digital switches and more than a million kilometres of fibre-optic cable. However, the transition to the internet was held back in France by a number of factors. Under 10% of homes in France had PCs, compared to North America where more than 35% of homes were equipped. But most of all, the internet was held back by a lack of need. France already had their own version, the Minitel. This terminal already fulfilled practically all the needs of internet users and was provided to anyone in France by France Telecom with no upfront cost. On the other hand, PCs were expensive in France, and the government was reluctant to give away the revenue stream brought in from Minitels. Minitel was also considered as safe, in that your connection was anonymized from the service providers, and it was strictly regulated. In fact, while support for a feature like cookies was added, using it to track users was forbidden – it could only be used for features like remembering the user’s position in an article (Driscoll, 2017). In the late 1960s, France was thoroughly behind in telecoms. Only 15% of households had a telephone, compared with 90% in the USA. Even more incredibly, the time to install a phone line was as high as three years (three days in the United States). Once the long-awaited phone lines were installed, only around 60% of calls were successful (Bisson, n.d.). However, the French government recognized this huge shortfall in technology and commissioned a report, which examined in great depth the possible outcomes of all aspects of French life in the various courses of action (L'informatisation de la société, 1978). It considered the various possibilities for centralizing or decentralizing the offering. It argued that centralization was too dangerous to the liberty of citizens, and that decentralization would lead to anti-state sentiment. Instead, the document favoured a system supported by the state but with minimal intervention, to encourage innovation and spur on the adoption of new technologies. To this end, France Telecom made the Minitel available for free throughout France, including placing publicly accessible Minitel terminals. To drive public adoption, they started charging for the phone book, which was made accessible in a searchable format over Teletel. Videotex is simply any protocol that facilitates displaying interactive content on a ‘ dumb ’ terminal. There have been various Videotex protocols, such as the North American X3.110 and the European CEPT family of protocols. Most Videotex services were largely centralized, such as BBC Prestel and the German Bildschirmtext. There was a similar system run by the BBC, Ceefax, based on Teletext rather than Videotex technology. This worked by broadcasting all available pages on the service in cycle (BBC, 1976). The receiver would then display only the page requested by the user. While significantly cheaper for the end user, thanks to the communication being only one-way, this did not permit advanced functionality such as
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