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OLPC: Lessons from Minitel?
July 30, 2006 | 6:17 pm
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By Branko Collin
In 1977 the first home computers emerged: contrary to the DIY hobby computers that preceded them, these were ready-made kits that included a keyboard, a monitor, some sort of external storage in the form of a music cassette player or floppy disk drive. In 1980 Sir Clive Sinclair (then just Clive Sinclair) released the first European home computer, the ZX-80. In 1982 the French PTT introduced the Minitel platform to France; roll-out wasn’t finished until four years later.
Minitel was different; Minitel was connected. It wasn’t so much a computer as a terminal in a huge network. Minitel connected the French the way the internet today connects most of the Western world. And it was also: one interface. 9 million terminals with 25 million users in 1999, France Télécom (formerly PTT) estimates. That’s 40% of the population.
Minitels were given for free to telephone subscribers, explaining the high penetration rate. It was initially intended to replace the telephone directory, but the device soon found other uses, such as networked chess, chatting, and of course porn and erotica. Third parties could offer for-pay services on the Minitel network. Payment went via the phone company, so that Minitel formed an early micropayment system.
The OLPC project has some parallels with Minitel. Negroponte wants a high penetration rate; governments have to order a million or more. The laptops will be networked using wifi, ultimately creating mesh networks (again, the high penetration rate would come in handy here). Simple networked computers that simply everyone and their uncle know how to use: Minitel.
And so if we want to predict whether OLPC will be a success or a failure, we could do worse than comparing it with that other project that connected a hitherto unconnected society.
Unfortunately, not being French myself, I have to rely on the stories of others. Googling for Minitel in combination with “success” and “failure” is ultimately a failure itself. The result is mostly the opinions of Brits and Merkins, and I am not convinced that their judgement of a device most of them have probably never seen is entirely based on how the platform actually fared.
Still, for lack of better I will try to list some of their opinions here. Minitel was a success, because it
- introduced French society to network computing from early on
- it made services available that had not existed up to that point
- it lowered the threshold for starting up a nationwide business, services on Minitel (the network was open)
- it enabled anonymous promiscuous communication for the gay population, and in 1986 Minitel was used to help organize a large-scale student strike
Minitel was a failure, because it
- slowed down the acceptance of the internet in France
- did not meet its goal of stimulating ITC development in France
- used a pay-per-minute system that made people limit usage
- could not grow as a personal computing platform (the hardware was proprietary)
- was used largely by the usual suspects; white non-poor young males
Are there any French readers in the house who can shed some light on the actual successes and failures of Minitel? Do you see any parallels between Minitel as it was and OLPC as it could be? If you could give Nicholas Negroponte a single piece of advice based on your experience as a Minitel user, what would it be?
Edit: a short comparison of the two platforms here.
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Comments:
Good analysis and questions, Branko. Because of the K-12 orientation of the OLPC project, perhaps the users will be more diverse. In fact, one hopes that well-off people will be the EXCEPTIONS among OLPC users. Otherwise, alas, it will mean that many of the machines ended up sold illegally.
Meanwhile here are other URLs of intererest:
–Nigeria orders first million OLPC laptops: $100 laptop project receives first official order.
–India Doesn’t Like OLPCs: OLPCs may hurt a child’s creative and analytic thinking abilities says India.
–Latest OLPC design: the red machine.
David
> Minitel was a failure, because it
* slowed down the acceptance of the internet in France
no, the point of Nielsen in the link is “proprietary service”, and it isn’t true, the interfaces were open (Videotex). real cause below
* did not meet its goal of stimulating ITC development in France
no, I didn’t saw this point in the link, but if there isn’t big names in the french IT industry, it’s nevertheless dense.
* used a pay-per-minute system that made people limit usage
the only real cause for a failure was the centralized scheme, as opposed to the decentralized one for the internet: france telecom was the only provider, and used the same expansion model as the telephone lines in france: subsidize the equipement by pricing the communications too much. The online time for getting a train ticket could cost 10F (2$). When internet came for the price of a local voice communication, it was great in comparison.
* could not grow as a personal computing platform (the hardware was proprietary)
not a personal computing platform, it was an information service. nobody cares about computing power of an information service, you’re not going to compute pi tho the 100000th decimal in your web browser.
* was used largely by the usual suspects; white non-poor young males
untrue, it was widely used. small businesses, relatively low income families, even poor farmers in brittany used it to retrieve their milk prouction goal from their cooperative. If only FT had done a moderately priced gateway to the internet…
To put things in perspctive, I think the openess of the OLPC network would avoid this failure. The imortant goal of the project, in my view, is to provide a connection, not a device.
Thanks for the reply, Marc. Is Minitel still used today? If so, how does it compete with internet?
Branko Collin said “The result is mostly the opinions of Brits and Merkins …”
Do you also consult the opinions of talking toupees? The primary definition of “merkin” may surprise you.
Just wondering if this system is still in use today.
“Do you also consult the opinions of talking toupees? The primary definition of “merkin” may surprise you.”
Really? I thought Merkins were those people that worked for Willy Wonka!
2005: 351 M calls, 18.5 M hours, 206 M€ revenues of wich 145M are redistributed to 2000 service providers, ~ -30% per year. There is still 6 millions terminals – they were FT’s property, but they leave them to their users to avoid recycling problems…
Main uses: bank/finance services (its security is excellent – because of the centralization) and professional databases access. FT put the example of the update of 12 millions of our personnal vitale health care card (wich contain a whooping 8kB of data, updated with fast 9.6kb links). France should look very exotic now.
(source: Bilan MINITEL 2005) A yearly presentation with as many down-oriented graphs is depressing
for myself, I haven’t used one or seen somebody using one since at least five years ago, when I renewed my inscription at the university. The year they throwed away a unix beast with at least 200 terminals. Progress is hard for the administration.
Thanks to Marc Lacoste for his interesting comments on Minitel. Lacoste says, “France telecom was the only provider” and he says “The online time for getting a train ticket could cost 10F (2$).”
When a telecom group obtains a position of power it is interesting to see what happens to prices. Consider the extraordinary cost of text messages (SMS) on mobile phones. An interesting table of data that compares the costs of different forms of communication was constructed by researcher Andrew Odlyzko.
Value of Bits: Cost Per Megabyte of Various Services
Service—————————-Revenue Per MB
Cable———————————-$0.00012
Broadband Internet—————–$0.025
Phone———————————-$0.08
Dial Up Internet———————-$0.33
Cell Phone—————————-$3.50
SMS Short Message Service—$3000
Source: Andrew Odlyzko, Pricing and Architecture of the Internet: Historical Perspectives from Telecommunications and Transportation, p. 4 (TPRC 2004)
Parallels to municipal wifi?
I wonder if the minitel model could be used by cities rolling out municipal wifi systems. Citizens with library accounts could d/l ebooks from the city library system to their cell phones for reading.
I hate the notion of reading books on per-minute charges, but maybe the books could be loaded onto flashcards in smartphones and read ‘offline’ as it were. The books would then ‘expire’ on a certain date, as I understand many prop. library ebook providers now do.
The minitel depended on a strong central government, which is the system in many of the countries OLPC and Negroponte are targetting. The notion of a ‘digital telephone directory’ which was flexible enough to be used for many other purposes makes me think that Negroponte’s $100 laptop will eventually find uses far beyond teaching kids, and might, if successful enough, transform their societies.
I imagine Negroponte foresees this as well.
Ultimately a machine will be a sucess in the third would if:
1. It’s available. They use what they have.
2. If it’s not expensive to use and upgrade. They use what they have.
3. It’s not some scheme to turn them into a consumer. Because they may want to grow, but they aren’t going to be spending a bunch of money on Microsoft Window based software that requires endless updates and spending to update it. It just isn’t going to happen, what will happen is after PEAK OIL happens, most of us will end up in the third world, or the third world citizens will starve in mass.
4. The device is MORE OPEN, meaning cheaper to use, and has more flexibility. Now I would say the internet is easier to use becuase it’s wider in appeal, it’s a luxery, but it’s broad market makes it cheaper. But this is in comparison of CONSUMER goods, and we aren’t talking about consumers who spend money in a traditional way with the third world, they are looking to spend time surviving. So the more wide open, meaning cheaper device will win. OPEN software is cheaper, the XO laptop is cheaper, and it doesn’t require an internet connection to work.
5. The weakness of the OLPC machine is the theft deterrent system. If the kids have to keep within range of the Schools server, then that is a weak point and if that fails and they all lose their functionality, the entire process fails. This theft detterent system therefore is the weak link, but necessary to prevent theft.
6. The mesh network will be the localized and FREE internet of the third world, a lot cheaper than any INTERNET access in the first world with the exception of cheap open “free wifi” access points, which are popular. Convinence, meaning using the mesh will be the most free and open device in the third world. Better than a cell phone you have to pay to use. This requires no more payment, just school attendence.
Those of you who are comparing this to other laptops or project in the first world are missing the finer points of the design. They really did analyze the market and have figured out a way to make a market out of one that doesn’t exist.
I think the OLPC project has the ability to be as sucessful as APPLE, maybe it won’t be the Microsoft of the world, but it will be a niche that Microsoft will copy, as Apple is.
Greg