Metroliner telephone article 4135

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ISDN is a post divesbreasture technology, and fear of regulators had *nothing* to do with it.

Sure they did. That's why Northern Telecom Inc, in the process of grabbing some 40% of the US market share for switches, wouldn't even so much as breath the word "computer" in the same conference with the word "switch", never mind talk about using them together recognizing that a digital switch is a computer.

Your irony is incorrect, and misplaced.

Note that fully digital switches did not exist until the middle 1970's, and were not widely used until at least the late 70's. By the late 80's US telco's were still only something like 33% digital (as opposed to long distance being nearly 100% by then).

Compare that with the timeline for divesbreasture... the DOJ anti-trust suit was filed in 1974, *after* MCI and several others had also filed anti-trust suits against AT&T. Discovery and other preliminary efforts lasted though the late 70's, and trial began in 1981. The consent decree was implemented in January 1984. (In essense, *prior* to ISDN, but *after* all digital switching systems were at least common though not yet universal except for... AT&T and other toll switching companies!)

If IBM was howling, it was because they couldn't get enough digital communications out of anything you might call "Bell".

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