Minitel (Part 1)
Minitel brought France into the networked age almost a decade before Americans would discover the commercial internet.
Minitel, launched by France's Ministry of Post, Telegraphs, and Telephone (PTT), brought the networked age to the French public nearly a decade before Americans encountered the commercial web in the early 1990s. Offering services like online directories, messaging, shopping, and access to news, Minitel’s innovative pay-by-minute kiosk system ensured that payments were divided between the PTT and the service providers, enabling publications like Le Monde and Libération to thrive in the emerging online landscape. Minitel terminals were handed out for free at Post Offices, and existing telephone customers enjoyed access with no monthly service fees. The Minitel experience suggests that the flaws of today’s internet—dominated by advertising and data capitalism—were not inevitable. At once a testament to the centralized ambition of the postwar welfare state and a product of the shift toward neoliberalism in the 1970s, Minitel embodied both the promise of public infrastructure and the forces that would ultimately undermine it through privatization and austerity.
Our credits to Julien Mailland and Kevin Driscoll for their book Minitel: Welcome to the Internet, published by MIT Press, which provided invaluable insights into Minitel's history, as well as the examples of Minitel services and their modern equivalents.
