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From: reiter@aipna.ed.ac.uk (Ehud Reiter)
Newsgroups: comp.society.development
Subject: Computers and Telephones
Message-ID: <4451@aipna.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 29 May 91 09:35:44 GMT
References: <1991May27.141355.978@darwin.ntu.edu.au> <1991May28.183943.16259@convex.com> <1991May28.204751.11309@news.larc.nasa.gov>
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Reply-To: e.reiter@ed.ac.uk (Ehud Reiter)
Organization: Dept AI, Edinburgh University, Scotland
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In article <1991May28.204751.11309@news.larc.nasa.gov> kludge@grissom.larc.nasa.gov ( Scott Dorsey) writes:
>   Still, a good telephone system is essential to modern business.  I think
>that having phone lines and preferably a local exchange is more important
>than computer communications.  Start with the easy stuff first; it's quite
>easy to set up local phone systems and probably not all that expensive.

I remember reading in one of the VITA newsletters about using computer
communications (via radio links, I think) in Africa.  I may not be remembering
this 100% correctly, but I think the point was that in some cases it
was better to use the available radio links for computer mail instead of voice
links, partly because if the radio links got very noisy (which happened a lot),
voice messages would be lost or misinterpreted, while computer messages would
just be retransmitted with more error correction until they got through.

So, perhaps computer mail is a good way to make the most efficient use of
a low-quality telephone or radio-link system?
--
						Ehud Reiter
						(e.reiter@edinburgh.ac.uk)