From: ahk@chinet.com

Charles Ellson  wrote:
>"Adam H. Kerman"  wrote:
>>Stephen Sprunk  wrote:
>>>On 22-Apr-15 09:16, John Levine wrote:

>>>>>>It's just like the stupidity of our CDMA/TDMA/iDEN war while the
>>>>>>world standardized on GSM.  Despite its flaws, GSM is far
>>>>>>superior to all of the US-developed systems _and_ costs less due
>>>>>>to economy of scale, which is why all US carriers are finally
>>>>>>moving that way.

>>>>>Oh, c'mon, GSM came later. And it was mostly Europe that decided to
>>>>>use an international standards-making process because of the
>>>>>relatively small countries; I don't recall any other part of the
>>>>>world being involved.

>>>>Quite right.  It was developed by ETSI, where E stands for European.

>>>It was developed by CEPT and later transferred to ETSI.

>>That would be the consortium of European post offices, not a world-wide
>>standards-making process, so your earlier statement was wrong. Who else
>>would have developed it? Under European socialism, the post office was
>>put in charge of the telephone infrastructure.

>In most cases long before socialism was a working (FSVO "working")
>concept. Communications were generally kept within control of
>government agencies from long ago, the most convenient department
>tending to be the national Post Office which already dealt with
>letters and later usually inherited telegraphs followed by telephones.
>Describing the governments at the relevant times as "socialist" would
>in most cases be a bit of a joke.

Both telegraph and telephone began as utilities owned by shareholders;
neither was begun by government.

I'm using the term "socialism" correctly to refer to nationalization of
public utilities, regardless of whether the governments at the time had
other characteristics of socialism. In some cases they were dictatorships;
in other cases, democracies often still under monarchy.

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