<story><title>Minitel: The Online World France Built Before the Web</title><url>https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-history/cyberspace/minitel-the-online-world-france-built-before-the-web</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>kuharich</author><text>Prior discussion: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=14681561&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=14681561&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Minitel: The Online World France Built Before the Web</title><url>https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-history/cyberspace/minitel-the-online-world-france-built-before-the-web</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>verri</author><text>It looks like most European countries had nationwide X.25 networks of some kind at the time.  Why did federating these networks never really take off?   There were some initiatives it seems (IPSS), but I can&amp;#x27;t find much information on international services provided over X.25.  Was it because of commercial reasons, or were there technical reasons that limited the scalability of these networks?</text></comment>