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Archived Articles
Simeon Mitropolitski is a Canadian analyst, of Bulgarian origin, and a former syndicated columnist with the Bulgarian News Agency (BTA). He is the author of several hundred articles dealing with hot political and economic topics, both national and international.
He was part of the first group of Bulgarian intellectuals and students that began the opposition movement that finally put an end to the communist regime in this country in 1989, and in 1996-1997 participated in international observation teams during the elections in several Balkan countries - Romania, Albania and Bulgaria.
In 2002 Simeon and his family moved from Bulgaria to Canada where they live now in Montreal, province of Quebec. Simeon is a Master of Political Science from McGill University and a B.A. of Political Science and History.
Global Real Estate Project
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Why Minitel lost the war with InternetMinitel sounds unfamiliar to many readers around the world, yet this technology was one of the precursors and possibly the most probable competitor to growing Internet in early 1990s. Created and commercialized in France in early 1980s Minitel was a mixture of high technology and state interventionism. This unique combination made it possible in France and acted as obstacle for the later development of Internet. The lack of such unique prerequisites made Minitel highly unlikely to succeed in other countries. At the end Minitel has turned into French-based online business branch integrated into the Internet.
 Minitel of early 1980s
Why France?France at the beginning of 21st century is indisputably one of the most advanced technological nations, including in the field of telecommunications. That wasn't the case just 30-35 years ago. Compared to its European neighbors French telecommunications looked backward. Country with such low penetration of fixed telephone lines couldn't claim to be a world power. In mid-1970s the French government decided to change all this. By early 1980s the telecommunications, thanks to enormous investments and state-supported businesses, were up to the point. Minitel was one of the new gadgets that propelled the nation into communication post-modernity.The principle is as simple as it's difficult to reproduce outside France. All customers of the state-monopoly PTT (later divided into France Telecom and the Post Service) were given instead of 'white pages' directory a PC-looking terminal, called Minitel, linked directly to their phone lines. The calculation was that this terminal of 500 Francs would take 5 years to become profitable (the 'white pages' copy price was 100 Francs). To access the 'white pages' people had to go online. In a free market economy such calculation would be utterly wrong because people would buy 'white pages' published by other companies. In France however this wasn't possible because the government prohibited printing 'white pages' for some years.
More than just 'white pages'So people had no choice other than going online looking for phone numbers of friends and relatives. This service was free of charge. But there were many other services that were available only for those who pay. People could browse lists of companies offering different goods and services and even pay online using credit card terminals attached to their Minitels. At its apogee Minitel included tens of thousands different entries. People could book hotel rooms and train tickets, some could find real estate companies, and most of all could exchange short messages with other customers. What they pay was the time passed online at a rate of approximately $1 per minute plus for the goods and services they buy. This per minute charge was partially distributed by PTT among the participating companies.By the mid-1980s Minitel became very popular in France. The rate of penetration was high and growing. PTT (later France Telecom) planned to export the business model to other countries. Some foreign governments and private companies showed interest. It was only the incredibly fast development of the Internet in the Untied States around the mid-1990s and elsewhere by the end of 1990s that made people and governments around the world turn their heads in other direction. France remained the only country with mass functioning Minitel system. At the beginning it made Internet penetration less likely and more difficult. People in France were accustomed to have certain goods and services using free Minitel terminal and didn't find very convenient to buy expensive PCs and in addition to pay monthly fees in order just to stay connected. It wasn't until 2005 that the number of Internet users in France (25 million) surpassed the Minitel customers of its most glorious period. Today the two systems act in parallel. There is an Internet Web site that provides access to Minitel directory of companies and services.
Why Minitel lost the war?Indisputably Minitel was the most important high-tech product France was able to produce and with more chance to give to the world. It won't be an overestimation to fantasize the hypothesis that this system would have been the main online tool globally available. It was the strong competition that made it look backward, but this backwardness was something very relative; in fact no new technology we buy today will survive as top technology the next five or ten years, but we buy it nevertheless. Global Minitel-based online services would have been much more competitive and give much stronger opposition to Internet if France had succeeded in exporting its online model in early 1990s.The role of the state is paramount in developing business models like Minitel. Without strong and progressive state apparatus there will be no concentration of investments on a particular field, and no policy of free terminal distribution replacing 'white pages'; in fact no company will accept to be listed and make additional investments if the business community doesn't trust such government. The Internet isn't imposed by governments and this in part explains its vitality around the world. Allowing citizens online is a double-edges sword. Authoritarian governments, on the one hand, can easily impose Minitel, but they fear their citizens and wouldn't do anything that would empower them and make their communication easier. Democratic governments, on the other hand, by early 1990s would have liked to have something like Minitel, but they couldn't impose it the same way as in France. This makes the French Minitel rather a national phenomenon. We know the rest of the story. The Internet made its first steps to the public using the same communication tool, the fixed phone line. Despite the broadband technologies many still use their phone lines to have access. The Internet wasn't imposed from above, from the governments. For those who can't afford buying PCs and paying monthly fees there are Internet cafes around the world. As PCs get cheaper and people get richer these 'cafes' gradually give ground to home-based online communities. Having all this, let's not forget that the first such experiment of empowering the citizens was done more than 20 years ago in France. Let's not forget that the Internet we now have is here not because it was the first of a kind, but because it was more competitive and more democratic of its predecessor.
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See also the directory of companies providing real estate services in, and general real estate information of France.
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