🚀 go-pugleaf

> The French Telecom provided FOR FREE (!!!!) EVERY (yes) phone customer 
> a little terminal (called minitel). The minitel has a 1200/75 baud 
> modem allowing to connect to:

This is slightly misleading, since, although you can still get hold of
the free terminal (Minitel 1) if you try, France Telecom is pushing new
ones with all sorts of useful features.  When I went to apply for one, 
they offered me the Minitel 10.  I asked what the difference was between 
it and the Minitel 1.  The reply was "20 Francs a month".  About the only 
technical advantage it had was that it can dial the computer from the 
terminal keyboard instead of from the phone.  Wow!  Other models cost up 
to 100 FF per month and allow colour displays, password protection (to 
stop your children/mother-in-law using it) and a few other things.  In the 
end, I got the free one because a friend was leaving and I got them to 
transfer his Minitel to me.

> - the phonebook server - no more phonebooks at home, just dial 
>   and find the number of your choice.

This is free for the first three minutes of each call, after that a
small charge is made per minute of use.  There's no limit to the number
of calls you can make, so you can keep looking at your watch and
disconnect after 2'50'' (in fact, one of the booklets they gave me
suggests such a scheme).

This service actually is excellent - I can check a number faster
on the Minitel than I can using my own address book (never mind the
phone book).

All the other services have to be paid for. As a minimum, the time
of the call is chargeable, many services have additional charges as
well.

> - hotel, train, airplane reservation systems

About 1 FF per minute, depending on the service.

> - AFP news 

I don't know what AFP is, so I don't know the price of this.

> - last but not least, a number of servers called "pink minitel"
>   where persons can dialog anonymously and let freely express 
>   their fantasies...

*Definitely* not least - these services account for about 80% of
the minitel services. About 1.5 FF per minute.

> In this sense, the home terminal forecast was true in fact. 
> But users do not program with them : they use it as a service.

True.

Other services which come to mind (I don't have a directory here) are
banking, catalogue orders, book clubs, customer information services,
tourist information, weather. One good thing concering the cost is that
you can have it displayed at the top of the screen as you work - the bad
thing is that you have to press a key to request it each time you call,
it doesn't appear automatically.

Kevin Stock