May 14, 2003
French Minitel celebrates 20th birthday.
BBC article. Minitel is a "proto-internet" started by the French telephone company as a way of saving money on phone books. It has since become adapted for chats, bill payments and much more. Although changed by the web, it is still going strong.
Minitel has been making a living charging small amounts of money for small amounts of data - a telephone number found, an amorous message sent - since the 1980s, and now the rest of Europe is starting to follow suit.
Late last year, BT in the UK and Ireland launched Click&Buy, a system that allows users to pay for content in little chunks, rather than signing up for all-you-can-eat deals.
Firstgate, the German company that created Click&Buy, has been running a similar system in Germany since 2000, and has signed up about 1,000 firms to provide content piecemeal.
By shifting the cost of these tiny transactions - 50 cents for a newspaper article, 2 euros for a smutty picture - onto phone bills rather than the credit cards so many Europeans mistrust, Minitel may have the makings of a killer application.
That is exactly what ebooks need.
