MGG - 4.5 - ATWT - data communications

I'm going to skip ahead a bit, here, and tell you about my Masters program elsewhere.

I got a job with the Government Telecommunications Agency.  The GTA, up until I got there, had been consisting of advisors who knew telephony, and likely radio communications.  About the time that I got there, the GTA started offering its clients, offices, and agencies in the federal government, email services.  The GTA did not provide these services, they just resold them, or bundled them, and had the telecommunications providers provide them to government clients.

Therefore, questions began to come in about data services.  And anytime anyone mentioned data, the response was "Just a minute. Rob!"

The GTA sent me on a data communications course.  I learned a lot from it.  Nothing about the Internet of course: the communications course was taught by somebody who was an old IBM hand.  We learned lots about the different IBM communications protocols.  There was mention of this new system called Open Systems Interconnection, or OSI.  But there weren't a lot of details, and there were no details on this thing called TCP/IP.

My data communications, and online, seminars, got bigger and more detailed.  I didn't teach the IBM communications protocols, but I did push the idea of this new concept, called packet switching.  I pointed out that packet switching allowed unimaginably expanded efficiencies in comparison to bullet board systems, online downloading, and telephony.

(I frequently said that when you got your bill from BC Tel, as it then was, 50% of the money that you were paying BC Tel did not go to providing communications services, but to actually generating that bill.  In one such seminar someone stood up at the back and called out that he worked for BC Tel and that I had the number incorrect.  I thanked him and said that he knew more about it than I did so what was the real number? 90%)

Previous: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2024/03/mgg-44-atwt-internet-although-it-wasnt.html

Introduction and ToC: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2023/10/mgg-introduction.html

Next: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2024/03/mgg-46-atwt-teaching-on-six-continents.html