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The French Videotex System Minitel: a Successful Implementation of a National Information Technology Infrastructure Author(S): William L

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The French Videotex System Minitel: a Successful Implementation of a National Information Technology Infrastructure Author(S): William L The French Videotex System Minitel: A Successful Implementation of a National Information Technology Infrastructure Author(s): William L. Cats-Baril and Tawfik Jelassi Source: MIS Quarterly, Vol. 18, No. 1 (Mar., 1994), pp. 1-20 Published by: Management Information Systems Research Center, University of Minnesota Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/249607 Accessed: 04/01/2010 13:20 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=misrc. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Management Information Systems Research Center, University of Minnesota is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to MIS Quarterly. http://www.jstor.org The French MinitelSystem The French Videotex Introduction Establishingan advanced national information System Minitel: A technologyinfrastructure has been arguedto pro- vide competitiveadvantage not onlyfor the coun- Successful tries that develop it but for the companies that of a operate in those countries. For example, in the Implementation UnitedStates, a proposalto implementa national National Information data superhighwayhas been enthusiasticallyen- dorsed by the Clintonadministration as a means Technology to improveAmerican competitiveness (Markoff, 1993). Singapore has been offered as an exam- Infrastructure ple of a country with a national data highway (Kingand Konsynski,1990). Researchers have attemptedto explainthe degree of success of na- By: William L. Cats-Baril tionalinformation technology projects by analyz- School of Business Administration ing the politicaland economic environmentsof University of Vermont those countries. This article follows that line of Burlington, Vermont 05405 inquiry.It describes the developmentof the most U.S.A. successful nationalvideotex system-the French Teletel system-and explains why it was suc- Tawfik Jelassi cessful while most other national videotex Technology Management Area systems have been commercialfailures. INSEAD Thisarticle has two purposes.The firstis to docu- Boulevard de Constance ment the major decisions-technical and 77305 Fontainebleau political-that made Teletel the most successful France commercial videotex system in the world. The second is to understandthe factors that made Teletel successful in orderto generalize fromits Abstract lessons. The materialfor the article came from Building an advanced national information a series of interviews,from 1990 to 1992, with technology infrastructurecan provide a com- former and current senior officials of France British the petitiveadvantage for the countriesthat develop Telecom, Telecom, Bundespost, and US it as well as for the companies that operate in West; with service providersand users of those countries. This article describes the Minitel;from internaldocuments from a variety development of the French national videotex of government agencies, and from published system Teletel,also knownas Minitel.The factors materials. -technical and made Teletelsuc- political-that Inthe late 1970s, videotex2was an fix- cessful are and important explained contrasted against ture of the telecommunications of other national videotex landscape systems that became most industrialized countries. national commercialfailures. Political Many intrigue,technical Post, and creative Telephone Telegraph(PTT) companies capability, choices, and the deep and commercialventures started videotex of a pilot pockets government-ownedutility are allpart Videotex was seen as one of the driv- of the Teletel projects. story. ing forces in the movement towardan informa- tion society. In 1982, there were at least 50 Keywords: Information com- technology, videotex projects in 16 countries of Western of diffusionof in- puterization society, Europe, Japan, and NorthAmerica. novation, IS technology transfer, public policy, videotex, case study A decade latermost of those projectshave failed. One noted exception is France's famous ISRLCategories: A10102, BC03, BDO101, Teletel.3T6letel is the most commerciallyviable DD0502, EL05, HA0804 national videotex system so far. As of 1993, MIS Quarterly/March1994 1 The French MinitelSystem Teletel has over 6 millionsubscribers and 20,000 Telematiquedescribes the mergerof computers services, and handles close to 2 billioncalls and and communicationtechnologies so as to create 110 million hours of connection time a year. informationprocessing applicationswith broad These statistics dwarf,for example, the private- societal impact. Nora and Minc predicted that ly owned Americansystems Prodigyand Com- eventuallyTelematique would affect all aspects puserve,which have arounda millionsubscribers of society-education, business, media, leisure, each and two thousandservices. Britain'sPrestel and routineday-to-day activities. By increasing (150,000 subscribers and 1,300 services) and access to information,Telematique was expected Germany'sBildschirmtext (250,000 subscribers to decentralize government and business deci- and 3,500 services), which ranked second and sion making, increase nationalproductivity and thirdin the worldduring the 1980s, are todaycon- competitiveness, and improvethe abilityto re- sidered commercialfailures, and theirprospects spond to an increasinglyfast changing environ- for growthare not promising(Schneider, et al., ment (Nora and Minc, 1978).5 1990). Noraand Minc'svision would requirea new na- What made Teletel such a success? tionalcommunication infrastructure, a long-term strategy, and cooperation between the govern- ment and business sectors. One recommenda- tion was for the Direction Generale des Telecommunications(DGT), as France T6lecom was then named, to encourage cooperation Background among computerservices companies and hard- ware manufacturers.Together they would pro- duce the technical components of the required Informationtechnology and French infrastructure.Another recommendation was for industrialpolicy the DGT to implement a research programto develop applicationsto leverage the infrastruc- Inthe mid afterthe American 1960s, particularly ture investment (Nora and Minc, 1978). Congress denied a permitto exporta large IBM mainframecomputer to the Frenchgovernment, Such recommendationsare typicalof Frenchin- French politicalcommentators started to voice dustrialpolicy. The strategyof havingthe govern- concerns that France was falling behind the ment orchestrate and subsidize large United States in informationtechnology. Some technological projects by creating alliances predictedthis wouldsoon be an intolerablesitua- among companies had been used frequentlyin tion of technological and culturaldependence. the transportationsector (e.g., Ariane, Airbus, Forexample, PresidentValery Giscard d'Estaing Concorde, TGV).The government has gone as stated that "For France, the Americandomina- far as "rationalizing"an industrialsector (e.g., tion of telecommunicationsand computers is a electronics) by encouraging mergers. As Jean- threatto its independence in the cruciallysignifi- Paul Maury, director of Minitel at France cant if not overridingarea of technology and in Telecom, put it, "Thistype of large industrialproj- the fieldof culture,where the Americanpresence, ects, or as we [the French]call them, 'les grandes throughtelevision and satellite, becomes an om- aventures,' have always captured the imagina- nipresence."Similar concerns continuedthrough tion of French politicians." the 1970s and influenced a central piece of the industrialpolicy of the country.4 The French telephone system in the In 1975, PresidentGiscard d'Estaing asked two researchers-Simon Nora and Alain Minc-to 1970s suggest a strategyto computerizeFrench socie- In 1974, when Giscardd'Estaing became presi- ty. Their reportbecame a best-seller (Nora and dent of France, the French telecommunication Minc, 1978) and coined a new word "Telema- system was very weak. Less than 7 million tique" (from telecommunication and informa- telephone lines served a populationof 47 million. tique). It was proposed as the cornerstone of Thiswas one of the lowerpenetration rates in the French industrialpolicy. industrializedworld and equivalent to that of 2 MIS Quarterly/March1994 The French MinitelSystem Czechoslovakia. Customers waited four years to well (e.g., Matra and Philips). To drive equipment get a new line, and most rural areas were still prices down, the DAIIannounced that an impor- equipped with manual switches (Chamoux, 1990; tant criterion in choosing suppliers would be their Mayer, 1988). ability to export and acquire larger markets. President Giscard d'Estaing made the reform of The government
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