Videotex was an early attempt at providing information services to consumers through television sets connected to telephone networks. Prestel was the UK's videotex service, launched in 1979 with high expectations of millions of subscribers but it only reached around 100k users. Minitel in France was far more successful, reaching tens of millions of users due to free terminals being provided and a wide range of private services. Differences in adoption between countries can be partly explained by differences in terminal design and provision, systems architecture, billing methods, and political/regulatory support. The rise of the World Wide Web in the 1990s drew users away from videotex services.