Aertel is the Irish teletext service provided by RTE, and can be accessed by pressing the text button on the remote control of almost any television, while on either of the RTE channels. It offers information such as news, entertainment listings, sports results, and travel timetables.

As with teletext services in general, Aertel is only used on fleeting occasions by the vast majority of the population. Generally useful for checking cinema times when there's no newspaper lying around, or checking flight times when there's no uh... airport around. However, spending any decent amount of time using the service becomes frustrating due to its slow response, even compared with other teletext providers, such as BBC's Ceefax. Nevertheless, there exists a veritable community of teletext users (albeit in the minority); there's a 'game zone', a kid's section (probably called 'kid zone'), and also other areas updated on a regular basis.

Aertel can also be accessed on the Web, at www.aertel.ie/aertel. This new method of access has increased the numbers using the service regularly, as users enjoy faster connections and more readable content. Impressively, the myriad Aertel pages are converted to HTML and linked to each other automatically, based on occurences of the 3-digit page numbers occuring in plaintext on the Aertel pages.

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