Brief reprieve for 'obsolete' Minitel

FRANCE'S pioneering pre-internet device, Minitel, has been given a nine-month reprieve and will not be scrapped now until June 2012.

The service was due to be switched off this September, but it will now survive to see its 30th anniversary year.

Announcing the June 30 switch-off date yesterday, France Télécom said the service had become "obsolete".

The nine-month extension to the service is designed to give businesses enough time to migrate any remaining Minitel services and account users over to the web.

Launched in 1982, Minitel introduced the French to instant messaging, gaming, e-commerce, online news and information and electronic bill payments long before the advent of the world wide web.

At its peak, around 1998, there were more than nine million terminals in use and €832m in electronic payments passed through it in a year, more than the entire US e-commerce market at the time.

The service has been in constant decline since the early 2000s, but France Télécom revealed last year that Minitel still had two million users - although most of these connections were via Minitel software on a PC, not a standalone device.

Even as recently as 2007, the service was generating €100m a year in revenue.

France Télécom and Pages Jaunes first tried to scrap Minitel in 2008 but made a U-turn following complaints from users.

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