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From: csg@pyramid.pyramid.com (Carl S. Gutekunst)
Newsgroups: news.sysadmin,news.admin
Subject: Re: i2ack request for news/email supply connection
Message-ID: <56296@pyramid.pyramid.com>
Date: 24 Jan 89 20:57:46 GMT
References: <102@i2ack.UUCP> <9198@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu> <56046@pyramid.pyramid.com> <424@ispi.UUCP>
Organization: Pyramid Technology Corp., Mountain View, CA
Lines: 20

In article <424@ispi.UUCP> jbayer@ispi.UUCP (Jonathan Bayer) writes:
>
>	Stupid question.  Why are trailblazers not legal in Europe?

Note that I was excessively generalizing. At least the UK, Belgium, and Italy
do allow TrailBlazers. And they are lots cheaper than any X.25 service.

Most European countries have a single government-owned body that operates the
post office, the telephone, and all public datacomm services. These are called
"Post Telephone Telegraph" authorities, or PTTs. They have very strict regula-
tions about what you can connect to their wires, very similar to the situation
with Bell Telephone back in the late 60's. (Back then, a brilliant genius got
around the problem by inventing the acoustic coupler. But you can't do auto-
answer that way.)

Many of those PTTs only recently began certifying V.22bis and V.26ter modems.
It will take awhile to certify the TrailBlazer, which is not CCITT standard.
(Good old familiar Bell 212A modems are not legal on many PTTs.)

<csg>