[ih] AT&T, carterfone, the 103, and why didnt BBSs start earlier?

[Noel Chiappa]

    > From: Johnny RYAN <johnnyryan1 at gmail.com>

    > if I understand you correctly, it was competition that was the key -
    > the Carterfone decision, by allowing other devices from various
    > manufacturers, enabled competition. 

Exactly.


One thing I should 'walk balk' (as the current politics-speak has it) a bit:
clearly the tech innovation and lower costs that Carterphone brought in
helped and accelerated the computer communication revolution later on, so it
did have _some_ impact on that revolution.

But the reason nothing much happened before the early 70s was IMO not so much
cost/technology on the communication end (as you point out, the Bell modem
was available, albeit at higher cost - and some systems, like SAGE and SABRE,
made use of the available primitive modems) as simply that there wasn't the
non-communications computer infrastructure there to use it - that was my
earlier point.

It's definitely interesting the way the two areas changed in a roughly
synchronized way - the communications stuff on one side, and the computers on
the other. There probably is some sort of loose synergistic connection there.

	Noel