telecom@eecs.nwu.edu (TELECOM Moderator) (07/24/89)
Does anyone reading this remember when Sprint began operation as a public telecommunications service? In the beginning, Sprint was the internal telecommunications function of the Southern Pacific Railroad. In fact, the name 'Sprint' comes from those early, early days -- = <S>outhern <P>acific <R>ailroad <I>nternal <N>etwork <T>elecommunications = For many, many decades, railroads have had telephone links between terminals along their line. Typically, they ran lines on poles along the tracks from one town to the next. Track telephones were situated a few miles apart on the line in the event of trouble requiring the crew to call for assistance. The Southern Pacific Railroad greatly expanded their internal phone network during the late sixties and early seventies. They had so much excess capacity as a result they decided to begin offering it for resale to the public once they saw the early success of <M>icrowave <C>ommunications, <I>ncorporated with its first offering, 'Execunet' in the early seventies. Soon, S.P.R.I.N.T. was far too large and involved for the railroad, which decided to severe it from Southern Pacific RR and make it into a separate company on its own. The rest, as they say, is history. The main article in the Digest today was written by Kevin McConnaughey and discusses Sprint's presence throughout the United States little more than a decade after it all began. Patrick Townson
peter@uunet.uu.net (07/26/89)
Those poor early SPRINT customers. The line quality on railroad phone systems has to be heard to be believed. Large sections of bare fencing wire (yes, on real fences), crosstalk from code lines, etc... --- Peter da Silva, Xenix Support, Ferranti International Controls Corporation. Business: peter@ficc.uu.net, +1 713 274 5180. | "...helping make the world Personal: peter@sugar.hackercorp.com. `-_-' | a quote-free zone..." Quote: Have you hugged your wolf today? 'U` | -- hjm@cernvax.cern.ch [Moderator's Note: They were long past the barbed wire on the fence post days when Sprint started. It was because they greatly modernized their system and found themselves financially embarassed as a result that they decided to sell the excess capacity. But you are correct about the old railroad phone networks. They were the pits. PT]