RickNel
Veteran Member
I seem to remember early fax machines had acoustic couplers in the mid-70s. Fax machines became more common late 70s (Vodafone started life as Vodafax in UK). Our then-monopoly, now Telstra, insisted on dedicated lines for fax machines. As I recall it, the audio-coupled dialling standards were applied to faxes a good ten years before data modems. The telcos hung on grimly to their profitable monopolies in 50-baud telex services and kept data services at bay as long as they could hold out. Ma Bell invented generations of excuses about "protecting network integrity", and monopoly telcos worldwide happily emulated them. It was an earlier version of the net neutrality arguments - except that the consumers who wanted more liberalised network services were far less organised and wealthy than Google and friends.
It was Japan that forced fax into the mass market - their script was much less friendly to keyboards and limited mechanical font sets, they had the demand, the capital, the manufacturing scale and the ability to enforce standards that drove fax penetration first across Asia, then into the West. IMHO that is what accelerated extinction of the audio-coupler.
Rick
It was Japan that forced fax into the mass market - their script was much less friendly to keyboards and limited mechanical font sets, they had the demand, the capital, the manufacturing scale and the ability to enforce standards that drove fax penetration first across Asia, then into the West. IMHO that is what accelerated extinction of the audio-coupler.
Rick