Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!portal!cup.portal.com!David
From: David@cup.portal.com
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.modems
Subject: Re: Standards/Trailblazer Discussion
Message-ID: <7897@cup.portal.com>
Date: 5 Aug 88 19:18:28 GMT
References: <7805@cup.portal.com> <309@synsys.UUCP>
Organization: The Portal System (TM)
Lines: 24
XPortal-User-Id: 1.1001.3426

In article <309@synsys.UUCP> john@synsys.UUCP (John C. Rossmann) writes:
>        Although I'm possibly wrong here, what little I've read seems to say
>that V.32 isn't really that much of a standard yet -- or at least that V.32
>doesn't have significant market penetration yet.

Well, this argument greatly resembles the great 802.3 vs. Ethernet debate 
back when the IEEE decided to not simply endorse standard Ethernet.  They 
made some changes to keep all possible vendors at a disadvantage (approving 
Ethernet with no changes would have given certain vendors a huge advantage) 
and came out with 802.3.

Standards are the consumer's only protection from markets which have little 
or no competition.  Unless there's a dozen or so vendors in a given market, 
it doesn't matter how big the market is; you don't have any protection if 
that vendor goes bankrupt, is bought out by competitors and shut down, or 
if any number of other possible events occurs.

The V.32 standard exists.  Arguing that it can be ignored because it 
doesn't have x percent of the market is arguing against all of the 
communications standards ever formulated, because at one time or another 
they all lacked x percent of the market.

David@cup.portal.com
David McCord