-=> Quoting Tom Walker to Viktor Pilpenok <=-

 TW> Actualy the Phone Companies here really dropped the ball. If they had
 TW> had jumped in like over there they could have had High Speed Internet
 TW> services almost to themselves. 
 TW> Their actions was something like in the early days of computers when
 TW> someone said we would NEVER have a need for more than 512K RAM!!  :-)
 TW> :-)

No, it was quite simple. The price for ISDN was based on the *expected*
number of subscribers, and the cost of the upgrades required to make a
switch capable of handling ISDN. 

In most of the US, they figured that there would be few users. And that
they'd be mostly business. This lead to high prices and "block charges"
(ie a fee per unit of data sent or received). And sure enough, they had
few subscribers.

In a few places, they figured that there'd be lots of subscribers and
priced accordingly. And lo, it came to pass.

Both situations were self-fulfilling prophecies, much like some things
that have gone on with regards to Fidonet standards.

--- FMailX 1.60