On Wed, Jan 03, 2024 at 02:50:19PM -0800, Russell Senior wrote: > So, to summarize: > > West Coast Telephone --(1964)--> GTE Northwest --(2000)--> Verizon > --(2010)--> Frontier --(2020)--> Ziply
Having lived near Beaverton for 63 of the last 70 years, I've experienced all of those transitions, from gestation onwards. When I was small, my parents shared a party line with another family; I remember hearing the phone ring and ring, and did not understand that the different ring was the other (not answering) family on the same line. Besides that, the first three companies were pretty good. As I got older, I learned much from telco service techs. Beaverton being home to thousands of adept electronics engineers working at Tektronix and other electronics companies, we demanded a lot from local phone companies, and often got it. It may be no coincidence that the 2010 Verizon/Frontier transition occurred three years after Tektronix was sold to Danaher, which accelerated the Tek plunge into darkness and the shedding of more jobs and local geek talent. For quite a while, there were no "consumer internet providers". The geek cognoscenti connected with SLIP over Telebit modems, and we got our feed to the Real Internet (HUNDREDS of nodes!) through a leased line rented by Randy Bush. That same leased line fed all of South Africa at one point - the entire nation was blacklisted, but Randy fed the apartheid-fighting progressives. Much changed with the arrival of consumer internet. I changed from keithl.rain-net.uucp to keithl.com . The rapid growth of Intel and other Washington County high tech has restored a fast-growing community of high tech geeks with high telecom expectations. Perhaps Russell and others can tell us about the transitions to Century Link from (Pacific Bell?) in Portland and Multnomah County. Perhaps Randy Bush is reading this, and can replace my 20% memory errors with his own. Keith L. -- Keith Lofstrom [email protected]
