Technically maybe, but culturally, it was in a lot of ways closer to the Internet . You could buy all kinds of services on-line, it was used by non techies. It even had something the Internet hasn't: Usable micro-payments.
I believe the open nature of the Internet is a much better base for growth than one where the slow-moving governmental phone monopoly controls everything.
Even so, humanity lost something by not choosing the minitel path: The ad-infested privacy-killing aspects of the net might be in a much better shape on platform with minitel-like governing.
First off, in hindsight i should perhaps have likened it to AOL or some such.
As for losing something, best i can tell this came about because ISPs were loath to become the "paymasters" of the internet.
Consider that for a brief moment, before all this hoopla about app stores, the mobile world had something akin to what minitel had. I could fire up a WAP page on my phone, pick out a game or similar, hit download, and the cost would be added to my mobile bill at the end of the month.
Nothing says that we could not see something similar on the web, except that ISPs do not want to be in the position to bill us for those downloads etc.
Or hn: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14681561