Re:MiniMit – Bringing Minitel back to life
by leshokunin on Sunday June 18, 2023 @06:36PM
(#36385242)
For those who aren't aware, this was a government backed mini internet. Most government agencies had services on it, which were in use until ~2001. You'd check how you did in your French version of the SAT, your school enrolment, it even had basic yellow pages and very archaic remote work functionality. There were expensive servers you could call for porn and gambling as well.
[ Parent
| on HN ]
My parents, when I was a kid, discovered that Minitel had also paid games, billed by the minute. I spent around 100 euros of their money on them.
Re:MiniMit – Bringing Minitel back to life
by JTyQZSnP3cQGa8B on Sunday June 18, 2023 @10:48PM
(#36386799)
IIRC in addition to the price of the service, the Minitel was billed by the minute like every phone communication was billed like this. That's why early internet was expensive in France, and it became "free" with DSL connections.
Re:MiniMit – Bringing Minitel back to life
by canucker2016 on Monday June 19, 2023 @03:15PM
(#36395365)
One of the differences between USA/Canada and France/Germany (and perhaps other countries). Local phone calls in Canada/USA are included in monthly phone bill service, whereas in France/Germany, local calls are charged a per minute rate in addition to any monthly phone service cost. I believe local phone-dialup ISPs took off in Canada/USA because of the lower cost.
There was a category of services with the same price as a local phone call. This was one unit every 3 minutes (~10cents) during the day, one every 18 minutes at night. In this price category, I was able to find boards and make friends, talking about Apple II games. There also were free access versions of more expensive sites, provided you knew the X25 address
> There were expensive servers you could call for porn and gambling as well.
And one of those adult servers became one of the principal French ISPs and a major telecom company: Free/Iliad.