• he/him

nerrrrrdddddd


Cariad
@Cariad

If you're familiar with Minitel, then it might not surprise you that the service made inroads into Canada thanks to its French-speaking province.

Le Devoir - June 30, 2012

Ce terminal a fait également une brève apparition au Québec, porté par la compagnie Bell Canada qui, en 1988, lance son Alextel, version locale de ce terminal vidéotex, dont 20 000 exemplaires vont être vendus dans la région de Montréal avant que la compagnie décide, devant le peu d’engouement pour la chose, de mettre un terme à cette courte aventure.

My poorly translated into English reads:

[Minitel] made a brief appearance in Québec through Bell Canada, who in 1988 launched Alextel, a local version of the terminal. 20,000 units were sold in the Montréal area before it was decided its lack of popularity was enough to put an end to its adventure.

So again, not a surprise it made its way here, but also unsurprising that it did not last long either!


rakslice
@rakslice

(image from this r/retrobattlestations post)
I think of Alex as Bell Canada's "we have Minitel at home" knock-off videotex system—built basically to not be shown up by a Québec startup that was planning to import the actual Minitel system, and built out of whatever they had handy (an X.25 network, no shortage of regular Bell 212A dial up points), what was obviously inspired by Minitel (back end services run by third parties reachable on the X.25 network, dubious keyboard choices), and what was around from the demise of the first Canadian videotex system, Telidon (its 2D graphics protocol suitable for modem use).

But the reason that the Nortel-branded Alextel graphics terminals for the system could be delivered in a very Minitel-like size and it was no sweat was that by the late 80s essentially nothing here was cutting edge... its lunch was already getting eaten by PC-based online services by time it launched, and as a graphical system without a pointing device its days were numbered; graphical web browsers were already starting to have a mass audience by time the Alex system shut down in 1994.


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