This week the FCC invited comments from parties interested in Verizon's application to discontinue Telex service in all 50 states. Honestly, I was shocked to hear this as I would have thought this had already happened... Email and faxes supplanted the service a number of years ago. Telex (along with it's Bell System cousin, TWX) was a customer-dialed network that was a true forerunner to email, allowing users to send text messages instantly around the globe. Well, as instantly as 75 baud would allow. Interestingly, Telex was launched by Western Union in 1958, so this year the service would celebrate its 50 year anniversary. Telex is the last vestige of the once-ubiquitous Western Union telegraph network that predated the telephone network. (See the Western Union Alumni website for a lot of interesting info on the company...)For awhile Telex was the most widely available telecommunications service in the world, even more available than voice. This was at least partially true until recent times as I recall folks from Caterpillar telling me that this was how they were communicating with many of their dealers in third world countries in the 1990s. Often when a government was toppled and the country's voice connections were severed, Telex connections were still available. (Probably because they could easily be tapped and recorded...)
It will be interesting to see if the Commission gets a lot of comments on this proceeding. It will also be interesting to see if this topic gets any press similar to the "Last Telegram" news stories of 2006. I rather doubt it as hardly anyone remembers what Telex was...
