The extent to which Minitel enhanced or hindered the development of the Internet in France is widely debated. On the one hand, it included more than a thousand services, some of which predicted common applications on the modern Internet. For example, in 1986, French university students coordinated a national strike using Minitel, demonstrating an early use of digital communication devices for participatory technopolitical ends.[15] Alternatively, the French government's attachment to the natively developed Minitel may have slowed the adoption of the Internet in France; in the 1990s, there was a peak of nine million terminals, and there were still 810,000 terminals in the country in 2012.

In the short term, some resources at France Télécom (now Orange) were dedicated to the development of Minitel that might otherwise have been focused on Internet development. However, France Telecom's focus on Minitel had little or no long-term effect on the adoption or development of internet- and web-based companies in France; France ranks roughly equal to the US and Germany in the current penetration of high-speed internet in households.

Bell Canada experimented with a Minitel-like system known as Alex with terminals called AlexTel. The system was conceptually similar to Minitel, but used the Canadian NAPLPS protocols and North American Bell System RJ-11 standard telephone connectors. Originally launched experimentally in the Montreal area, Alex was then launched in most areas served by Bell Canada (primarily Ontario and Quebec) with offers of a free trial period and terminal. The principal information offering was the telephone directory. Although branded as a "bilingual" (English and French Canadian) service, the majority of other services offered were the experimental ones originally offered in Quebec and were completely Francophone. Retention rates were reportedly close to zero. The service closed down shortly after exiting the experimental stage. Telidon was an earlier Canadian text and graphics service using the same technological underpinnings.