demise of the Minitels ...

France Telecom Minitel service ended on December 31, 2006
- replaced by Le Compte Achats, for companies only.

The cutoff for new Minitel registrations was May 31st, 2006.

"In 2005 there were 351 million calls for 18.5 million hours of connection, generating € 206 million of revenue, of which € 145 million are redistributed to 2000 service providers (these numbers have a loss of around 30% per year). There are now still 6 million terminals owned by France Télécom, which are left to their users in order to avoid recycling problems. The main uses were bank and finance services because of its security, and professional databases access. France Télécom put the example of the update of 12 millions of the personal vitale health care card."
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minitel

Minitel, a Videotex online service accessible through the telephone lines, was introduced in:
- South Africa - 1986
- Ireland - 1992
- Canada during a brief experimental phase
- Belgium
- Germany
- United States early in 1990's in limited markets


Minitel is a redundant service for anyone connected to Internet ...
... and if one would make the leap to Minitel, why not go all the way ?
.