[e2e] Re: crippled Internet

[Henning G. Schulzrinne]

Jon Crowcroft wrote:
> 
> In message <Pine.LNX.4.31.0104181113520.7552-100000 at ockeghem.cisco.com>, stev
> e wolff typed:
> 
>  >>-=< snip >=-
>  >>>(would someone like to start a phone company that allows outgoing
>  >>>calls only  -? not much of a business case:-)
> 
>  >>Symmetry.
> 
> - early telephone nets used party lines, and
> it was expected that the main use for them would be to replace "low
> quality wireless broadcast" for music - note that the assymetric
> phone lines got replaced when it became apparent that the business
> case was for person-to-person voice calls. i.e. it didn't last long
> before the trend was to deploy a meshier network...the IP equiv is
> fiber to the home -

At least in the rural United States, party lines were in use well into
the 1950s. They were not installed for radio service, as far as I know,
but simply for cost reasons - it was far too expensive to run individual
pairs 20 miles into the sticks for the very occasional phone call. An
early case of message-based time-division statistical multiplexing :-)

As an example, http://www.coloradovalley.com/cvtchistory.html says "By
the early 1970's, all of the cooperative's members were converted to
single-party service.", thus, my time estimate may be somewhat
optimistic.



-- 
Henning Schulzrinne   http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~hgs