FYI France: using Internet from Minitel ("Interoperability"?)


FYI France: using Internet from Minitel ("Interoperability"?)


People both in France and on their way over keep asking how they can
reach the Internet from the French Minitel: at least to avoid having to
pack a laptop for a Paris trip.

I personally know of the following three public Minitel / Internet
services -- one of these is very new -- which will give someone in
France Internet access.  Two offer e - mail only, although both should
take the plunge into ftp / telnet. The third is full service e - mail,
ftp, telnet, gopher, etc. ad nauseam - or - whatever.

These public services are a very small subset of the growing number of
French Internet services -- university servers, corporations, etc. --
which provide Minitel access to their password - holders as a
convenience. It is good to remember also, for those who have used the
little pink tty "boxes" through which it originally came, that Minitel
now can be reached from various types of screen: tty is omnipresent in
France, but you also can dial in using emulators with vt100 and most
other screen standards, from anywhere where you can get access to a
computer -- my own practice is to use the omnipresent tty for checking
in on my e - mail, and then hunt up a friendly computer for the rare
occasions in my case when I need more.

My own interest in all this is a little more than practical. I know why
Minitel is offering access to the Internet. I can't quite figure out
why the Internet isn't offering access to Minitel. I'd really like to
decide which approach means what -- whether offering or not offering
access to the other system indicates more or less imagination or
paranoia on the part of either the Internet or Minitel -- but it's
still all beyond me just yet. It does seem that the "grand public" in
France once again has better access to the networks than does the
"general public" in the US. In the meantime -- while John Malone and
Barry Diller and Bill Gates and Larry Tisch and Michael Eisner and
perhaps France Te'le'com are deciding networking's future -- at least
the French, and francophiles, now can reach both the Internet and
Minitel easily, without a laptop.

The three services are:

1) 3616 ALTERN  1.27 francs / 22 cents per minute

this service currently can be reached from North American Minitel (the
others can't) at 48 cents per minute -- in France it also is available
as 3615 INTERNET at 2.19 francs / 39 cents per minute, 3615 KO at the
same rate, and 3615 UNIX at 1.27 francs / 22 cents per minute, and I am
not sure what the differences are among these;

the last time I used it, last year, this service offered e - mail only
-- they give you an address, something like "internet.fr", to which
friends can send e - mail -- and could not be persuaded to open up to
ftp and telnet and other services, fearing system overload;

2) 3617 EMAIL   2.19 francs / 39 cents per minute

this is a large outfit -- a firm called FRANCE - TEASER, which does
many other things -- and, like 3616 ALTERN / 3615 INTERNET, etc.,
offers only e - mail;

3) 3619 USNET   2.19 francs / 39 cents per minute

this is Delphi! Yes, Rupert Murdoch has brought the Internet to
France!  Actually this is a deal worked out with France Te'le'com by
their own subsidiary in New York -- the one which sponsors the North
American Minitel (voice 1 - 800 - MINITEL) -- to mount the Delphi
service for Minitel access. It can be reached on North American Minitel
by entering  INTERNET  after the login, prior to selecting a kiosk
service. From within France it counts as one of the 3619 "foreign"
services. You can use the full range of Delphi Internet utilities,
including e - mail, ftp, telnet, gopher, and presumably whatever else
Delphi now has or will add to their own service.


The welcome day seems to be fast dawning when the technology in all of
this will become "invisible", as they say at XeroxPARC, or "banal", as
they say in Paris. This sore - shouldered sometime - traveler can
attest to the non - portability of a 7.5 pound "portable" laptop; and
dropping, losing, electrifying, explaining to customs, and otherwise
catering to its smaller and lighter competitors still is inconvenient,
particularly on a vacation. All this one day may no longer be
necessary. It already isn't, in France.

Bonne route. See you in September.


***

FYIFrance e - newsletter        ISSN 1071 - 5916

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