Data communications over telegraph circuits 1901

The Internet didn't exist yet. Low cost voice calls were what eliminated the Telegram, and started the decline of TWX-Telex, before TCP-IP was even invented.

But because it provided hard copy, TWX-Telex was still very essential to some businesses, especially if they required international communications, well after Carterfone.

FAX is what end it. Hayes modems with the AT command set, coupled with the Personal Computer (including by not exclusively the IBM PC) put the final touches on it. Or at least as far as domestic use goes...

By the time the Internet became significant, the only place TWX-Telex existed was outside the US and in business offices where connectivity with international locations was necessary.

I'm not sure if FAX or the Internet eventually end off that useage. Oddly the Internet almost end off FAX, except that it drove the price of long distance bandwidth down to nothing, and that has kept FAX alive past any otherwise useful lifespan.

Trying to convince managers in the late 80's and early 90's that per message a FAX cost dollars while email cost pennies, was difficult. But by perhaps 1995 anyone who couldn't understand that, was gone...

Ahem... some might say that AT&T never got *any* marketing act together! (Data was just down there, barely above computer marketing, at the bottom of their ladder.) Oddly enough, AT&T marketing in 1995 had all of the figures to demonstrate that if they didn't get that act together by 2005, they wouldn't exist.

The entire upper management of AT&T, even ten years after divesbreasture, was made up of people whose expertise was developed and highly tuned to the concept of switched message traffic supporting the Corporation. They had the numbers but were frozen in place, unable to make the moves required to adjust to a world where data was significantly more than half of the revenue stream. (Remember all the efforts AT&T's Board of Directors made to change CEO's, even bringing in an outside CEO! But none of them could shake up the entrenched second and third layers of management, which is why they were quickly replaced. In the end, nobody succeeded.)

It must have been good Marketeers, because technically their services to the Air Force were a disaster with repercussions that cost significant dollars. For example, selling blocks of satellite trunks sans echo suppression of any kind. The long term effect was that other carriers modified their tariffs to charge the Air Force when entire circuits had to be re-engineered to make up for deficiencies in "black box" portions leased from WU.

I knew of one "backup" circuit that was handed to WU with the intent of gaining diversity via alternate routing, and ended up logged out of service due to excessive echo... for more than 2 years, at $50,000 a month. Everyone was pointing fingers at everyone else, and *nobody* would give in and spend the money to fix it. One young USAF engineer even tried to prove that echo suppression wasn't really necessary. That cost him a small bet and a lot of laughs from me. He even got it balanced against an aisle phone at the switch well enough that it didn't sound too bad, and with a smile said: "See!". So I told him "Sure, now have the operator connect it to the phone on the next aisle, or to *any other phone on the entire base*." Of course it sounded horrible...

I didn't see anything technical that encouraged long term business with WU.

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