AERTEL CLOSURE: 22.06.1987 - 12.10.2023

SPDUB

As of this moment ( 952am ) I can still access the full service of the WST service off satellite but on my Saorview set can only get a message on pg 100 saying it is closing

SPDUB

As of 1158am news headlines on WST says last update at 1016 but while I can still go to stories any that are multi page are stuck on a page which is not necessarily pg 1

Schorpio

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121227028#Comment_121227028

Yes - in that I remember using it, but I can't recall anything that was on there.

Essentially, you'd dial the number and be given an Aertel page to navigate to. That was 'your' page, and you interacted with it with the telephone. I remember hunting through some of the adjacent page numbers, hoping to find some that someone else was controlling. Never did though.

It being a freephone number meant that I was allowed to use it to my heart's content. I only remember using it once or twice though.....can't have been many (any?) games on it.

Apogee

Aertel WST no longer present on RTE One SD on Astra.

RTE News report:

https://twitter.com/rtenews/status/1712529319648436691

Micheal Varadkar

RTE have said In multiple press releases that "Digital Aertel" has only been available since 2019 🙄

Micheal Varadkar

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121227028#Comment_121227028

I wonder why it never took off? Reminds me of unison TV internet boxes, an affordable way to have basic internet access & an email account without a computer in the 90s but didn't sell.

icdg

In the 1990s anything like that would have been treated with suspicion, the fear of the high phone bill was real, it’s hard to explain in todays era of all-inclusive packages for a flat fee but back then you looked on anything that wasn’t a local number off peak with dread.

RoTelly

Now that it has close what are they using for subtitling ?

The Cush

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121255314#Comment_121255314

No change, separate data stream, Teletext subtitling

BrianD3

About 1.5 weeks since closure and I realise how much I must have used Aertel. Have barely watched RTE since. E.g. in the mornings, my previous routine would have been to go to RTE and spend several minutes browsing Aertel and maybe look at some of the tripe (e.g. repeats of the Today Show) that RTE was broadcasting at the time. Now i just go straight to sky news and it doesn't' give me what I want..

AFAIK, teletext is still going strong in Germany, Austria and other continental and Scandinavian countries. This is telling - the people in these countries are more sensible and less likely to be useful idiots welded to their smartphones (OMG, there's an app for that!) while mindlessly scrolling and clicking.

I'd say one of the problems RTE had with Aertel is it couldn't be monetised in the same way as the web can. Back in the day, I believe it was mostly or fully self funding from advertising and the bookmaker pages etc. In recent years this will have gone and many people didn't even know that the service was still running as it wasn't promoted which suited RTE and gave them justification to close it.

Micheal Varadkar

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121277134#Comment_121277134

Someone on another website suggested that RTE should have monetised it by doing a deal with RIP.ie years ago to carry it's death notices on Aertel