[12076] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Internet vs Minitel : 2nd version less contreversial
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (LEHOUX@vax.lse.ac.uk)
Wed May 4 09:58:33 1994
Date: Wed, 4 MAY 94 11:37:09 BST
From: LEHOUX@vax.lse.ac.uk
To: com-priv <com-priv@psi.com>
Here is the second version of this paper. I tried to take into account the
comments and critics of the first version I put on this mailing- list at the
beginning of March 94.
Enjoy the reading...
Thierry Lehoux
Lehoux@vax.lse.ac.uk Table of Matters
{TM \o "1-2"|Introduction 1 Comparing Minitel with Internet? 2 The Growth of
Minitel 2 The Growth of Internet 3 An emerging definition of these networks:
definition by the protocol 4 The Minitel drive to internationalization 5 The
feet of clay of the giant Internet 5 Two logics face to face: the academic one
and the business one 7 How the Minitel will take over Internet 8 The access
cost 8 A central services directory 9 The billing policy 9 Attaching a value to
non productive but needed resource 9 Minitel's organization is changing 10 Can
Internet resist commercialization? 11 The fear of Internet commercialization is
real 11 Legal issues and Privacy on Internet 12 The choice of the user 13
References 14 Books 14 Publications 14 Newspapers 15 Electronic references 15
}
Introduction
In the world, there are two networks that have the same characteristics of
growth and of aim: Internet and Minitel. Everybody is looking at the 21st
century as the Age of Telecommunication and of Cyberspace. However cyberspace
will not be a quiet place, competitors are going to fight for the power and
money. I have seen the winner: France Telecom and the Minitel Network, its
centralized organization and long term objectives.
The object of this article is to explain the possible strategy of one company,
France Telecom for the takeover of the Internet network. Arguments are based on
the elements that were the cause of the Internet success, but which are now the
source of its future death.
Comparing Minitel to Internet is a blasphemy for the so-called Internauts,
because as Barlow noted, they believe that their network is the most powerful
creation of human intelligence since the invention of writing. Thus, it is
important to understand why I dare to compare Minitel and Internet.
Historically, these two networks arose in the last ten years, and they nowadays
have a real influence on the way of working and living of million people,
Internet in the English-speaking world and Minitel in France. The growth of
both systems has been motivated by different objectives, although it is easy to
see that they needed to reach a critical mass to influence their environment.
Evaluating the power of each network is difficult. As far as I am concerned,
two factors have to be taken in account: the ability to connect to the network
and the ease of finding the desired information.
Comparing Minitel with Internet?
Precise measurements versus poor estimates is the first hint underlying the
difference of structure: centralism versus anarchy. 6.5 million Minitel
terminals and half a million computers with Minitel emulation are connected
according to France Telecom [France Telecom Financial report; 1993] which
create one billion connections for 90 million connected hours per year. Finding
similar data on Internet is hard. It is evaluated that there are between 10 and
20 million users who transfer 10 to 20 terabytes of information each months
[Press; 1993].
The main difference between the Minitel and Internet is to be found in the way
the two networks arose. There was a Minitel champion, France Telecom, to manage
the success, but nothing comparable existed for Internet. The US government
lost control of Internet when it became used trhoughout the world.
The Growth of Minitel
In 1977, A. Minc and S. Nora [Minc & Nora; 1977] created the neologism
"telematics." This word implies an increasing interconnection between
telecommunications and the computer field. France could have missed this
emerging field of opportunities if she had not developed her own strategy on
time. Furthermore, those emerging technologies would have been threats to the
French high-tech industry.
At the time, going into telematics was also seen as a chance to develop a
high-tech national commitment to create a new product, the Minitel, but also to
improve the French telephone network. It is obvious that Minitel was born from
two not prestigious parents: the outdated telephone network and the
international threat to French independence and leadership in the high-tech
sector. Because of the French nationalist feelings, the reaction was strong and
the development of the French Videotext system quick and efficient.
Officially Minitel refers to the name of the terminal, by extension it usually
describes the entire system [Dupagne; 1990]. The Videotext system was defined
as a way of making databases and information services available to the public.
These were to be accessed via a compact terminal connected to the telephone
network [Charon; 1987].
France Telecom played the role of a project leader in the Minitel story, and
managed to obtain the commitment of the whole industry. In these "big projects"
often launched by the state, each actor has to find an interest [Cohen; 1992].
"The introduction of Videotext was considered as part of an industrial policy"
[Bouvman; 1992]. France Telecom's control ensured the Minitel success. The
Minitel success has been built on a good marketing strategy, free distribution,
attractive billing policy and electronic white and yellow pages directories.
This strategy was successful, because a unique feature of Minitel is the
synergy between public and private resources underlying a long term industrial
policy. At first, France Telecom made available a network up to and including
the user terminal [Charon; 1987] and immediately after services suppliers
offered services which have generated huge revenues.
The Growth of Internet
Internet creation was not planed by a single organization, but by people who
wanted to discuss and to exchange information through a new media: information
system network. Because nothing was administrated by a large organization, it
is difficult to say where the first matrix of Internet appeared. This lack of
administration is also the richness of this network. But what is Internet ?
Internet is a connected set of networks, such as those using Transmission
Control Protocol (TCP) and Internet Protocol (IP). Often this definition is
extended to all these other networks with gateways towards Internet, such as
Bitnet, Janet and Usenet. [Hardy; 1993]
The first pre-Internet network was the Arpanet Network. This network was
designed for four different sites. The first Arpanet information message
processor (IMP) was installed at UCLA on September 1, 1969.
Arpanet was very important in the development of the Net. Its initial structure
was influenced by the fact that it was intended to form part of the central
command and control structure for the US armed forces during the height of the
Cold War. At such it was designed to be able to survive a nuclear attack. This
influenced the decentralized and peer-to-peer structure. [Hardy; 1993]
Additional nodes were soon added at Stanford Research Institute, the University
of California at Santa Barbara, and the University of Utah. Once the first link
between these universities was established, it was quite easy to connect
university networks to share information for the benefit of everybody. Thus the
concept of shared information and the creation of a distributed network was
initiated by universities and governmental pressure due to the cold war period.
The Rand report on distrubuted communication [1962] proposes a communication
system where there would be no obvious central command and control point
In the early days of Internet, this network was only used by an elite
population made of students and university researchers. The Internet network
steadily became the means of communication of a particular elite sharing and
using a network based on the availability and free exchange of information.
Bruce Sterling, one of the contributors to the cyberpunk wave, defined the
network as follows:
Its users made the Internet that way, because they had the courage to use the
network to support their own values, to bend the technology to their own
purposes, to serve their own liberty. Their own convenience, their own
amusement, even their own idle pleasure. [Sterling; 1993]
When we read this sentence, we understand why the 'Internauts' wanted and still
want to keep the control on the 'Net'. Internet seems to be a world reachable
by everybody, but it is a very closed world as we will see later.
An emerging definition of these networks: definition by the protocol
Both histories of Internet and Minitel show that networks are emerging and
growing because of protocols. These networks are existing because of the
adoption of the same protocol of communication, the X25 protocol for Minitel,
and TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol / Internet Protocol) for Internet.
In a sense, protocols are to communication what programming languages are to
computation. a programming language allows one to specify or understand a
computation without knowing the details of any particular CPU instruction set.
Similarly, a communication protocol allows one to specify or understand data
communication without depending on detailed knowledge of a particular remote
system. [Krol; 1992]
Defining Minitel and Internet by technical protocols is strange for new users,
but standards and protocols give us the root definition of Minitel and
Internet. Protocols are the common set of procedures used by everybody to
navigate the system and access information.
The early adoption of sets of protocols enabled hardware providers and service
suppliers to have a reference to solve technical problems and thus it allowed
them to concentrate their efforts on services to be proposed. However, two
opposite logics seem to take place: money versus free information. Minitel was
created to generate revenues both for France Telecom and services providers,
Internet emerged in an academic environment. Thus, for almost ten years,
Internet has cohabited with another network based on totally different values
and objectives. Can Internet resist to the business wave ?
The Minitel drive to internationalization
Minitel's success has been limited to France, because it was designed for and
around the French telephone system. France Telecom failed to export the whole
system because the early adoption of a French standard. For example Nippon
Telegraph & telephone Corp. told France Telecom that it won't be joining in a
project to adapt the Minitel for the Japanese market because of the French
standard [Computergram; 18/01/1993].
France Telecom abandoned the idea of a direct exportation of Minitel. Instead,
they worked towards an internationalization of the use of the French system.
Nowadays, the Minitel system with dial-up can be reached from nearly anywhere
in the globe. The international traffic started from nothing in 1987, reached
30000 hours in 1990 and the expectation for 1993 were of 350,000 hours [France
Telecom Financial report; 1992].
The rumours of the purchase of the Prestel system by France Telecom [The
Independent; 17/12/1993], the plan for a merger of the state-owned
telecommunication companies of France and Germany [The Times; 18/11/1993], to
form a strategic alliance to provide future-oriented services for business in a
global environment, [The Times; 09/12/1993], all point at France Telecom's
Europeanization strategy. This long term strategy of takeover and alliance
seems only possible because France Telecom earned so much from the Minitel:
#720 million [Financial Times; 04/03/1993]. France Telecom will now export the
services and the know-how of service providers for organising large quantity of
data. This is only possible by providing international access to Minitel
services. Thus, increased interconnection with other networks will show the
functionalities to worldwide users. In 1990, 250,000 terminals have been
installed outside France and there have been 150,000 further orders
[Computergram; 10/10/1 990]. In Great-Britain, this strategy of implementation
has been well-managed:
The Minitel software for PCs supplied by France Telecom for # 90.48 is in
English. It costs #25 to become a Minitel subscriber. Costs for the services
range from #9 to #68.30 an hour, depending on the information provider. While
France Telecom is initially offering access to its French system, it is likely
to develop a UK network. [The Independent; 17/12/1993]
France Telecom chose Great-Britain to test users' reactions in an English
environment. One more time, France Telecom focused its attention on a
population which represents a potential of use for the next century. These
customers are attracted by services where information is well organized, even
if the cost is expensive compared to other information sources.
The feet of clay of the giant Internet
Minitel's main advantage, control and clarity, is also the main weakness of
Internet, open system and the lack of control and of clarity. The entire
network, with its one million host computers, whose 30% are outside the US,
distributes, each day, terabytes of information. Does the quantity reflect a
real quality? Finding its way in the information jungle is difficult, and it is
worsened by the poor quality of the user interface: for example FTP utility,
the Internet standard protocol for transferring files from one computer to
another, uses strange commands like get, put or cd to navigate inside
information trees. New users are often seduced by the information potential of
Internet. However, because of the lack of usability of commands and interface,
they cannot find what they want and switch off their computer.
The flexibility of the Internet also makes it far more complex. There is, for
example, no catalogue of resources on the Internet. The Internet is therefore
difficult to use unless you know exactly what you are looking for and where to
find it. Similarly, the Internet lacks the equivalent of a telephone directory
[Financial Times, 30/11/1993]
This view is in a sense biased, because there are now something like 24 books
to help the neophyte to find his own way in the Internet. However, does that
mean that the previous remark is false? No, it only proves that having too many
resource directories or none at all is the same thing for the user. The new
user needs things very simple. HeHeHe needs a global how to book, but it is
very difficult to find. For the networking neophyte, entering the Internet
feels like arriving in a foreign city where you don't know a soul and can't
speak or read the language. [Financial Times, 30/11/1993]
Succeeding in finding one's way in Internet is maybe a test for new 'Internet
user', but too many have failed, and the real Internet champions don't always
want to exchange or share their knowledge of the networks. The Gopher interface
was set up to provide a user-friendly interface and an easy access to
information through top-down menus. This interface seems the solution to
Internet problems, but again the decentralized organization is producing some
aberrations:
Searching Gopher can be quite fun, but time-consuming. Gopher menus are
constantly changing as new choices are added. The menus are reorganized so the
menu choices leading to a database one day may be completely different the
next. [Eagan; 1993]
This lack of user friendliness is a major drawback for Gopher. Supposing we
found a very interesting menu in one of the directories of Gopher. To use it
again, we mark it with the bookmark facility. Next day, we call again the
bookmark and we have something different. A pen and an old-fashioned piece of
paper are the accessories to remember the path to information in Gopher.
Moreover, because nobody is purging the Gopher environment, it is usual to find
test files or very old, two years old messages.
Professor Negroponte from MIT said in Emerging Technology 94, that the 21st
century will be the information age century, but that does not mean more
information, but less information. People only want the information they are
interesting in and nothing more. This view can and should be addressed to
Internet. Gopher missed this objective.
Nowadays, with the emergence of multimedia applications, software companies are
creating their own interface for accessing data on Internet. The problem of
this diversity is that there are no common objectives. Each designer is
answering a particular problem. Nobody wants or has the power to impose a set
of requirements for the new interface. Thus, new interfaces are emerging, but
the most powerful one has been designed and implemented for commercial
purposes. Organising Internet data is a very lucrative activity according to
Compuserve, the major company providing access to Internet for individuals.
Some Internauts believes that this diversity based on the 'shared information
utility' concept is strong enough to resist to users claims for clarity and
user friendliness. For the veteran users it is quite easy to claim that there
is an order in the network:
Internet is a spontaneous order in the sense in which Hayek used the term. No
one planned it over all, yet an order progressively emerges [Ejan; 1993]
The notion of spontaneous order is powerful. However, when there is an
increased competition for creating information superhighways, the best weapon
to fight against competitors is alliance, for example the joint venture between
France Telecom and Deutsche Telekom to create the next European information
highway. [The Times; 09/06/1993]
Two logics face to face: the academic one and the business one
These two logics are poles apart, the academic one, and the business and
commercial one. In the next part, we will show the advantages of the commercial
view of the Minitel and how people will subscribe very quickly to this network.
How the Minitel will take over Internet
The Minitel strategy will use three different tools to kill Internet: the
access cost, the services directory, the billing policy and the creation of a
Minitel culture.
The access cost
In France, the cost for accessing Minitel is very cheap. A Minitel device, or a
PC with Minitel emulation has to be connected to a normal phone line. Firms can
rent Minitel sets for less than #5 per month, or purchase an emulation for #50.
Once the installation is done, all the Minitel resources are available through
a telephone plug. The bill is based on the connection time. Furthermore,
because of established billing system, a company can easily estimate the cost
for using services. France Telecom also provides some Minitel devices with
logical or physical access keys to restrict the use of given services. Thus,
non professional services, games for examples, are unreachable. Connecting to
Internet is not so easy:
If you are associated in any way with a government agency or university,
chances are you can get an Internet connection easily and in some cases for
little or no cost. [Strom; 1993]
The premium investment is higher for the people who are not part of this elite
group, because of the material, special phone line and software and hardware.
Furthermore, the premium is different from the location.
Try to go to a phone company and say you need a 56 Kbit/sec line into the high
school in rural Minnesota, South Dakota or Utah. You will usually get one of
two answer, either they will do it for an unaffordable amount of money or they
will flat out tell you it can't be done. [Network World; 08/11/1993]
Assuming now we have a gateway to Internet. We invest money to configurate the
company network to reach Internet resources. Does that mean that we have a
secure enough connection to carry out business ? Some would expect so, but a
number of complains about the daily utilization of Internet deal with some
access problem.
Try to persuade stock brokers to use the Internet when their quotes may be
delayed an arbitrary amount of time by someone at a university doing a file
transfer. [Network World; 08/11/1993]
Because Internet deals with the request following the First In-First Out rule,
a business user could be delayed by non productive traffic.
Now supposing that there is no such problem, what will be the cost of use of
Internet ? Several papers give us advice about the right configuration for
accessing Internet, E-mail alone, third-party gateway, Gopher or Veronica or
WWW, but they all agree on one point:
The service for a full-time Internet connection can cost anywhere from $400 to
$500 to several thousand dollars per month. In addition, there will be
recurring cost, such as the phone service or line and network/system
administration, and fixed costs, such as modem and/or routers. Many
organizations underestimate the cost of system administration. [Dern; 1993]
In other terms, nobody knows the real cost of Internet. The question of the
access cost to Internet is one of the great mysteries on the network. I asked
the question many times on mailing lists specialized on the issues of Internet.
Each time, I had some different estimation of cost for an E-mail connection.
A central services directory
In France, there are today something like 24 000 service providers. A
'Miniteler' uses mainly four or five services regularly, but he connects
occasionally to 35 services. The richness of Minitel is not to simplify the
access to the main services, but to the very occasionally used ones. This help
is only possible because there is an extensive and comprehensive service
directory set up and maintained by France Telecom based on three key notions,
"Find out, communicate and act" [Charon; 1987].
Because France Telecom understood that the connection time to a given service
would be short and occasional, it was necessary to provide a powerful tool for
finding services. The directory service is a query driven system. The user
types his request using common words and the directory service provides a list
of all the services related to the request. For example, the keyword 'Mountain'
would display all the services that are related to mountain activities:
meteorology services, road status to and from mountainous areas, ski holidays
booking. This interface is very powerful as it provided easy access to services
the customer did not know of. Simultaneously, it provided free advertising for
service providers.
The billing policy
France Telecom decided to centralize the billing of all services, that is to
say that France Telecom is becoming a clearing house between users and services
providers. For each access, the revenue is divided between France Telecom and
the service provider. This system is a black box for the user. Whatever the
number of services used, the customer has only one bill to pay to France
Telecom. After collecting the money, France Telecom reallocates revenues among
all services providers. This system is very simple for the customer: only one
bill to pay, and it is also simple for service providers who do not have to
deal with customer billing.
Attaching a value to non productive but needed resource
The billing system allows new organization to attach a value to resources,
which were non productive before Minitel, but required nevertheless. Taking the
example of the LSE library which through the Libertas system displays the
database of all the books available. Such information is part of the BLPES
mission. But what if BLPES can earn money with its database ? In France, large
French libraries have set up a Minitel service using their database.
The cost of implementation is very low, because the library already has its
database for its day to day operations. Thus, the Minitel service is a way to
generate money through the connection of thousands of users. The equation is
simple: attaching a value to a resource, in our case a database. Profits
generated are used to buy new books and provide a better service to library
users.
Similarly, other services were set up, because companies realised that they
already had databases for their own business. The creation of such databases is
often expensive, but the Minitel proposes a way to amortize this by creating a
service.
If a library decides to install a paying service in Internet, the procedure is
more difficult than for Minitel. First, it is necessary to advertise that there
is a new service. This is also relevant for Minitel. Secondly, some users
should send an E-mail message to have a password. It is necessary for the
billing system. Thirdly, money has to be collected. How will the service
organise this collection ? What will be the base of our billing policy, the
time of connection or an outright sale system ? Because of this long procedure,
there is a major risk of losing occasional customers. Minitel policy is simple
and easily understandable by everybody, because based on the connection time.
The area where Minitel has a significant advantage now is in the centralized
billing system, which has facilitated the growth of thousands of small service
providers. [Sirbu; 1993]
The ultimate tools set up by the Minitel organization is a "Trojan horse". Now
it is possible to reach Internet via Minitel. This facility is a way to attract
the customers and lock them into the Minitel world, because they notice how
easy it is to find information on Internet with Minitel. Furthermore, because
the consumer pays for the data he wants, he has the right to ask for reliable
and relevant information. In a noncommercial environment like Internet, the
user has no rights because he does not pay for the information he collects.
"There is rarely a guarantee the database found is accurate, reliable or
understandable" [Eagan, 1993].
Minitel's organization is changing
France Telecom is no longer the leader of this strategy. The service providers,
because of the money involved, are promoting their services and Minitel too.
This commitment between France Telecom and the service providers has been
created since the beginning of the Minitel era, and now the services are the
best advertisements for the Minitel system itself.
>From a centralized network, Minitel is becoming a network which maintains
itself and influences its environment. Today, it is very difficult to say that
a particular agency is in charge of the Minitel development. This mutation is
the most important for the future, because this type of organisation generates
some innovations to tackle arising problems. The role of France Telecom is
changing, it was the initiator of the project and now is becoming only a
clearing house for bytes of information. When a user needs to contact the
Airport service, he has to go through the France Telecom interface to be
connected to the service. This way of doing has two main advantages. The user
doesn't need a special phone line, and France Telecom is able to use the
quickest line to connect via Transpac, the French packet switching network, the
host of the service provider.
Can Internet resist commercialization?
In a near future, some Minitel services will be implemented to display the
great amount of free information of the Internet network. The information
consumer will pay for this well-organized information display, because of its
easy access. Money logic is creating its spider's web. Finding and exploiting
free information sources will become a well-paid job. In the last ten years,
some French companies have been developing their own ability to manage,
organize and sell large information databases through Minitel. This experience
is a great advantage, since these companies have been confronted since the
Minitel creation to a competitive environment. Under the control or pressure of
France Telecom, each service provider proposed the same type of data
organization, so that users can consume different services without having to
learn each time. Minitel was, is and will be customer oriented, if only because
of the amount of money involved in this market.
The fear of Internet commercialization is real
Every time I talk about commercializing the Internet, I get waves of outraged
E-mail from various tax-supported enclaves across America [Metcalfe; 1993]
We can understand the fear of this 'elite' who uses the network for its own
advantage. For example, mailing lists, discussion group distributed via E-mail
from a central computer maintaining the list of people involved in the
discussion [Kehoe; 1992] allow academic people to share ideas, opinions. The
problem is that these people are using networks facilities free of charge. But
somebody has to pay for all these communications!
Veteran Internet navigators fear commercialisation and regulation will doom the
freewheeling spirit that has enables the Internet to thrive. [Financial Times;
30/11/93]
Some readers (survey of 35 Network World readers) think the Internet should
continue to favour nonprofit work. 'Educational uses should have priority over
commercial uses' one reader says. [Network World, 19/07/1993]
In fact, the veterans fear of losing their privileges, free acces to all
resources, in the coming network. According to them, education, sharing
information and freedom are not possible in a commercial environment. The power
of such veterans is however negligible, because they cannot resist
commercialization with ideas. For the last ten years, they have been using
Internet free of charge, usually, an Internet account has been part of the
university package. Academics have tested the network, now the business
community will use Internet to generate profits.
Many Internauts say commercializing the Internet would destroy it. That it's
too fragile to endure free markets. [Metcalfe; 1993]
Social considerations could slow the commercialization, but what about the
technical limitations. At Emerging Technology 1994, Professor Negroponte said
that today almost 50% of all communication network resources are used by
billing system. Commercializing Internet, billing on the base of connection
time, means an increase of the traffic by 50% to track users, send bills, and
collect the money. For the moment, the network infrastructure is not strong
enough to support such new traffic.
Legal issues and Privacy on Internet
While the 'Internauts' are dealing with philosophical questions about the
future of Internet, some organizations are stressing the legal anarchy of
Internet.
On the Internet, anybody can copy any material, whether it is a newspaper
article or a graduate thesis, without charge. Essentially, this means an
individual who posts information on the Internet forfeits rights of ownership.
[Financial Times; 30/11/1993]
Some veterans still believe that such sentence like "Redistribution to other
sites is not permitted except by arrangement with American Cybercasting
Corporation" can protect their ideas. The reality is different. Downloading
files is becoming so widespread that nothing can protect it. In the past, when
academic values were stronger, each Internauts had regard for copyright.
Newcomers are using texts for their own purposes. Commercializing the Internet
means that control of access would be possible, so royalties could be paid to
authors, whose texts have been read or printed.
The second legal problem with Internet is the possible lack of privacy. The
Clipper program set up by the Clinton administration allows US government to
use a back door chip to control encryption algorithms. In other terms, Clipper
could be used to read E-mail. Since this program claims to be aimed against
terrorism, electronic privacy is in danger. However, privacy on Internet seems
to be in danger. US authorites are trying to restraint the use of encryption
tools. The US Senate Bill 266 declares for example:
It is the sense of Congress that providers of electronic communications systems
permit the government to obtain the plain text contents of voice, data and
other communications when appropriately authorised by law.
However, the main tool to reduce the privacy is the E-mail address, because
this address is moving the message, so it is easy to know from who, when and
where an E-mail was sent. By nature, privacy is in danger in Internet. On the
contrary, Minitel allows users to connect to networks without having a
telephone number, because a growing number of public paying Minitel devices are
available. Thus, it is possible to stay anonymous, because the only link with
the service providers is the connection to a phone number.
To fight against terrorism, US agencies are asking for reducing the privacy on
Internet. France Telecom policy is clear: privacy is the first principle of
Minitel. Minitel is as secure as using a public phone for a short call. Nobody
can trace the call because payment is possible with coins.
The choice of the user
So, in comparing Internet and Minitel and in adopting a user point of view,
there are two main issues: - do these networks provide the services that users
want? - do these networks have at least one useful user interface?
Both, Minitel and Internet are providing services that users want. However,
because there is no competition between these networks, we don't know which
network is likely to adapt itself to new needs from the customers.
Minitel is answering the second issue by providing a unique Minitel's interface
style. Users need an instant to be sure they are connected to a Minitel
service, because of the adoption of a unique interface style. We noted that
Internet is beginning to tackle this problem of interface, but because of a
lack of centralism, the emergence of a single interface will be long.
In fact, Minitel will purchase Internet, not directly, it is simply impossible
to buy one million hosts, but by pushing towards commercialization. Minitel
services providers have, first the know how to organize large databases,
second, a ten years experience in a competitive environment, and third they
have a huge amount of money, coming from the Minitel profit. Thus, I won't be
astonished if French services providers come in Internet.
References
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Computergram, NTT will not participate in adapting Minitel, Issue 2087,
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The Independent, Frank Barrett, Minitels gets on the road: France's succesful
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GCIT: Minitel vs Internet {page|2}
