From editor@telecom-digest.org Fri May 28 15:18:22 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.3) id i4SJIMi04910; Fri, 28 May 2004 15:18:22 -0400 (EDT) Date: Fri, 28 May 2004 15:18:22 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200405281918.i4SJIMi04910@massis.lcs.mit.edu> X-Authentication-Warning: massis.lcs.mit.edu: ptownson set sender to editor@telecom-digest.org using -f To: ptownson Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V23 #265 TELECOM Digest Fri, 28 May 2004 15:18:00 EDT Volume 23 : Issue 265 Inside This Issue: Happy Memorial Day Holiday to all! Things Looked Rosy for Western Union in 1960 (Jim Haynes) All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson and the individual writers/correspondents. Articles may be used in other journals or newsgroups, provided the writer's name and the Digest are included in the fair use quote. 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Geoffrey Welsh =========================== See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details and the name of our lawyer; other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 28 May 2004 14:31:29 EDT From: TELECOM Digest Editor Subject: Things Looked Rosy for Western Union in 1960 Over this holiday weekend, a lengthy magazine article submitted by Jim Haynes from Business Week magazine, copyright 1960 by Business Week. It originally appeared in this Digest in three parts back in 1992. The three parts (a technical neccessity then) are combined in one single part in this edition. PAT From: haynes@cats.UCSC.EDU (Jim Haynes) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 92 22:51:55 -0800 Subject: Things Looked Rosy for Western Union in 1960 The August 27, 1960 issue of {Business Week} showed W. U. President Walter P. Marshall on the front cover, with a pushbutton message switching position in the background, and the following story inside. (page 86 ff) "Electronics Puts Young Blood in Old Company" When Walter P. Marshall (cover) stepped into the president's job at Western Union in December, 1948, it looked as if his tenure might be short and unhappy. Western Union, once the backbone of fast and dependable long-distance communications in the United States, was, quite plainly, a deathly sick old company. It was saddled with high labor costs, old equipment, crushing debt, and local operations that often cost more to run than they returned in gross revenue. Some Western Union executives were waiting for a declaration of bankruptcy; many doubted that the company would survive to celebrate its 100th anniversary in 1951. -Rejuvenation- But in the ensuing 10 years, Western Union not only has pulled through, but it has thoroughly rejuvenated itself. Instead of a winded oldster that could only look back at the days when its competition was the Pony Express, it now resembles an electronics adolescent with a bright and profitable future. The company's new strength already is evident: Last year its revenues and earnings set an all-time high. Western Union can be expected to keep on growing. In the next five years, management hopes to spend $350-million on expansion. Next year, the company plans to spend $105-million for plant and equipment on top of $45-million this year. Completion of a transcontinental microwave network will increase the system's circuit capacity 10 times, and will add enormously to the range of services it can offer. It will be able to provide increased telegraphic service, leased voice channels, facsimile, closed-circuit television, and perhaps most important of all, high-speed data processing channels that can handle digital information at computer speeds. -I. Financial Turnaround The job of turning Western Union around from a faltering centenarian to an eager and aggressive competitor in the communications field was a difficult one. Before the company could even think about modernization, it had a raft of complex financial problems to solve. Few outside the company realized just how close to extinction it was 10 years ago. A look at the books shows how deeply in trouble the company was: - Operating losses were about $1-million a month. - Bond issues totaling $30-million were maturing in 1950 and 1951, and bond issues and notes totaling $35-million were due in 1960, but no provisions for paying them were being made. - Labor costs were eating up 69.2% of the company's gross revenues, leaving little money for maintenance or modernization. - Message service, Western Union's basic revenue source, was declining steadily. It dropped from $178-million in 1947 to $146- million in 1949. - Competition was formidable. More and more, business communication was going over long-distance telephone lines, and American Telephone & Telegraph's TWX service, a teletypewriter exchange network, was diverting a tremendous amount of business from Western Union's wires. So the yellow glow of the familiar Western Union offices burned red in Western Union's ledgers. The many local offices it maintained hung like a weight around the company's neck, pulling it deeper toward losses. Yet to abandon some of the offices or even limit their hours required not only months of delay but also expensive hearings. -Quick Action - These are problems that Marshall set about solving when he took over in 1948. He was 47 and had a background in financing and accounting. Unlike most of his predecessors, he had long experience in the telegraph business. With the exception of Joseph Egan, Marshall's immediate predecessor, Western Union's presidents since the 1930s all had been railroad men. Marshall had come to Western Union in 1943 as assistant to the president when the company absorbed Postal Telegraph, where he had been executive vice-president. For years, Postal Telegraph had been on the verge of insolvency, and its troubles provided familiar experience. Marshall's first actions as president of Western Union were to organize the company's debts and to start cutting labor costs. He took care of debts by selling off property and leasing it back, by selling pole lines, cashing in securities, and selling such subsidiaries as Teleregister and American District Telegraph. For example, the big Western Union building in downtown New York was sold to Woodmen of the World Life Insurance ... [illegible] company for over $12-million. Then Marshall shocked the board of directors by announcing immediate plans to spend millions of dollars on a broad modernization and expansion program for services such as Desk-Fax, a method of transmitting telegrams by facsimile directly to business offices. He also accelerated the program for installing automatic switching centers in 15 cities. He got management behind a big push to get more private wire business and to increase facsimile services. All of this cost a lot of money. And with the company's history of steadily diminishing revenues, it looked risky indeed. -Quick Results- Losses in 1949 amounted to nearly $4.5-million on sales of $181-million. But by the end of 1950, Marshall's moves began to show results. Unprofitable local offices were being cut out and automatic switching centers were beginning to increase efficiency. That year alone, labor costs were cut by nearly $6-million, revenues went up to almost $188-million, and the company turned a $7-million profit. There has been no red ink since then, and in 1959 earnings were a record $16-million on sales of $276-million. The company's debt position also has been reversed. All the outstanding bond issues have been paid in full or advantageously refinanced. -II. Leap to Modernization- So, with its financial house in order, Western Union is in a position to take off in new directions to insure its future. And in many respects, never has there been so fortuitous a time for the company to modernize. During the late 1940s and throughout the 1950s, startling progress has been made in electronics and communications technology. Two developments particularly were important to Western Union: (1) the perfection of high frequency radio relay system - microwave - which provided a logical and much less expensive way to increased long-distance facilities; and (2) development of computers and automatic electronic switching systems, which promised big increases in efficiency at high reliability levels. -Big Jump- With much of its plant obsolete, Western Union was able to go from old manual systems to the most modern automatic equipment in one big jump. For example, in the 1940s almost all of Western Union's services were carried on telegraph channels of a very narrow frequency range of 170 cycles per second, providing a top communications speed of only 60 to 100 words a minute. Today, the company's nearly complete transcontinental microwave system will consist of two 6-million cycle channels capable of carrying broadband television, handling over 12,000 simultaneous telegraph messages, transmitting computer tapes at high speed, or carrying voice communication or facsimile. These so-called broad band signals can't be carried on ordinary wires, but require coaxial cable or ultra-high-frequency radio beam carriers. Had its modernization started earlier and been more gradual, the company would have sought to increase its capacity slowly through intermediate steps. These would have been expensive and yet they would not have been able to provide the facilities the company now feels it needs. -Decreasing Dependency- The new broad-band system also will reduce Western Union's dependence on other communications carriers. Western Union particularly has been dependent on the Bell System for leased facilities. In the early 1950s, about 70% of Western Union's circuit mileage was leased, mostly from AT&T. Although the number of leased wires has not been reduced in absolute terms, today their proportion has decreased to about 60%. S. M. Barr, Western Union vice-president in charge of planning, expects this percentage to drop to 40% in the next few years, hopes to get the proportion of leased facilities down to 20% eventually. 'You can see the kind of growth we expect, then, if we see no reduction and a possible increase in the number of leased facilities,' he says. The big increase in traffic that Western Union anticipates for its new system is not likely to come from public message services, which have been the backbone of its business. This type of service basically is tied to population growth, and to some extent to merchandising gimmicks such as singing birthday greetings, flowers and candy by wire, and other special services. [1] -Private Expansion- But it does expect its private wire services to expand greatly. Here, particularly, Western Union's new facilities will be of help in solving communications problems for private customers. Western Union already has a good deal of savvy when it comes to tailoring a special system to a customer's needs. About 2,000 companies in the U.S. -- among them U.S. Steel, General Electric, Sylvania, and United Air Lines -- have private communications networks leased from Western Union. And its bank wire service interconnects 213 banks in 55 cities with pushbutton switching. Western Union got into the private systems business without much selling effort. In most cases, it just waited for customers to come to it. But those days, like the days of the hand-operated message centers, are long since gone. Now the company is pushing leased systems aggressively, and the results show it. In 1950, private wire revenues brought in $8-million, or about 5% of Western Union's message business. In 1959, private wires sang a $52.3-million tune on the cash register. It won't be long, Marshall believes, before the revenues from private wires top those from public message services. -Meeting the Competition- Until recently, however, Western Union could not compete directly with AT&T's TWX network, which offers direct customer-to-customer teleprinter connection through a central exchange system similar to a telephone network. Several years ago, FCC gave Western Union permission to purchase TWX from AT&T, but the price was too high. Now, Western Union is expanding a roughly similar system called Telex that will offer direct customer-to-customer dialing. [2] Besides direct dialing, the biggest difference between Telex and TWX is the method of billing customers. Telex customers are charged only for the time that the facilities are in use plus a 50-cent connection charge. A short order to a New York broker from, say, Chicago via Telex might be subject only to a 10-second time charge, compared with a three-minute basic charge on TWX. -Growing Network- At present, Telex service is available only between New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. But before yearend, 19 more cities will be added. In 1961, it will cover 23 more cities, and management hopes to get approval from the board of directors to cover 128 cities by 1962." [Note 1 by Jim Haynes] One would think that a writer for such an astute publication as {Business Week} would have noted the price elasticity of personal communication. This would have suggested that the dropping price of long-distance telephony would devastate public Telegram service, as it did. [Note 2 by Jim Haynes] Dial Telex service began in Germany in 1933, just three years after AT&T introduced manual TWX service in the U.S. Telex used modified SxS telephone switching equipment. Western Union imported the European technology and equipment, even to the 50-baud teleprinters. One wonders if AT&Ts conversion to dial TWX was at all in response to competition from Telex, or if it was simply a matter of taking advantage of the switched telephone network for transmission. I assume that manual TWX calls were timed using Calculagraphs, just as voice calls were. Telex used a simpler charging mechanism, no doubt because it originated long before automated telephone billing. At the time a Telex call was set up the customer's charging register was connected to a pulse generator, the pulse rate depending on the distance to the called station. The charges could be reduced at night simply by slowing down the pulse generators. At least in Germany there were Telex PBXs in hotels; in this case the pulses were relayed to the PBX so that the hotel guest could be billed. Telex was always customer-dialed long-distance service. [Moderator's 1992 Note: Although telex was always customer-dialed, provision was made for an operator's help in completing a difficult connection. Dialing (was it? ) '17' from the telex unit connected the user to WU's 'manual assistance positions' in Bridgeport, MO. An operator there communicated with the user by typing back and forth on the keyboard, like a modern day 'chat', and the operator could then do what any telco operator could do: complete the connection, verify a busy terminal, busy circuits, out of order, or number not in service condition on the receiving end. In addition, the WU manual assistance operator was used to place 'collect' (reverse charge) connections and special or third-party billing. I think dialing '19' connected the user to WU directory assistance where help was given by 'chatting'.] III. Building For the Future- Western Union has great hopes that Telex will increase its revenue load many fold. Even so, it's hard to imagine that such business will fill all the extra traffic capacity that Western Union's new microwave system provides. And so, once again, President Marshall is counting on electronics technology to help him out. Three out of every four systems that Western Union is now installing for customers include provision for handling data processing information. Communication between computers, or tape-to-tape digital messages between dispersed plants, offices, and data processing centers may eventually equal the volume of voice and message communication. AT&T President Frederick R. Kappel, too, thinks that's possible. -Expandable System- So Marshall believes his modern plant is coming on stream just in time to catch the new flood of data processing business. The transcontinental microwave network's two 6-million cycle channels each are capable of handling transcontinental telecasts, or thousands of telegraphic, voice, and data processing channels. The system is designed to carry up to seven broad-band channels, and these will be added as needed. The Transcontinental network, with extension legs, will cost $56-million, but once the microwave relay towers are in place, the system's capacity can be doubled for about 15% to 20% of this cost. Eventually, Western Union will have a great loop of microwave routes that will interconnect North and South as well as East and West. The full system may cost $250- million between now and 1970. -Government Contracts- Part of the load the new microwave system will carry is already under contract. The U.S. Air Force hired Western Union to build an automatic system of data and message handling that will interconnect all domestic Air Force bases. The combat and logistics network (COMLOGNET) [1] also costs, coincidentally, $56- million and will be operated by Air Force personnel. Western Union also built for the Air Force an international automatic switching telegraph network, [2] which was completed last May, and has put in a high-speed weather map facsimile system for the Strategic Air Command. In addition, it built a nationwide weather map facsimile system for the Weather Bureau that serves several hundred points. To work out new communications applications to keep its microwave system busy, Western Union has enlarged its engineering and research departments. The company is now spending about $6-million a year on research and development -- more than ever before in its history. Of course, Bell Laboratories spends a lot more. But Marshall has some pretty definite ideas on how to get the most mileage out of research expenditures. 'One problem,' he admits, 'is getting the right kind of people that can really come through with innovations, and I'm not at all sure it is possible to hire this kind of person off the street, even if you have the most wonderful facilities in the world. Some people just don't like to work for big organizations.' -Research Interests- To tap that kind of talent, Western Union has purchased large interests in a number of small companies that offer intriguing technological or manufacturing competence: Microwave Associates, Inc., a leading developer of microwave elements such as waveguides, tubes, and semiconductor elements. Technical Operations, Inc., a Boston company engaged in contract research for the government and industry in computing, physics, mechanical engineering and electronics. Dynametrics Corp., another Boston company, which produces electronic measuring equipment that possibly could be related to future production control systems. Such systems might fit into an integrated data processing system built around a Western Union network. Hermes Electronics Co., a producer of crystal filters for microwave uses and designer of part of the telemetering system for the Titan missile. Hermes also has done a lot of work on computer translators that change binary code to decimal readouts. Gray Mfg. Co., Hartford, manufacturer of switchboards, dictating machines, and electronic gear. Teleprinter Corp., which has developed the smallest page teleprinter on the market. [3] These six companies dovetail so well as a combined research, engineering, and manufacturing operation that there are incessant rumors that Western Union intends to meld them into one big outfit. Marshall denies such an intent, disputes the logic of such a move on the ground that the talent attracted by these companies comes from their small size and independence. Actually, Western Union benefits substantially from the present management. As part owner, it can use the services of the individual companies and also coordinate their activities to some degree. In addition to these six companies, Western Union also has invested in Teleprompter Corp. But this company falls into a different category. Teleprompter is not a manufacturer of communications equipment. It custom-designs office communication centers, assembling equipment made by others and mounting it on its own furniture. But Teleprompter's work in closed-circuit and pay TV and in other fields jibes with Western Union's interests. -Dynamic Outlook- These new interests and Western Union's own research efforts all point to a greatly expanded future for the company. Although it still has some problems to solve, the company is in vastly better shape than it was ten years ago. Instead of sitting back and being outdated by new technology, Western Union very definitely is counting on the latest electronic wizardry to win a bigger piece of the communications market for itself." [Note 1 from Jim Haynes] COMLOGNET started out as a bunch of IBM card transceiver machines, which used internal modems to transmit punched cards over private telephone lines connecting the Air Materiel Command bases. When the Air Force set out to replace these with a Real communication system, both the name and the scope of the project changed several times as is typical of government projects. Names that followed COMLOGNET were first AFDATACOM and ultimately AUTODIN (automatic digital network), which became the main record communication system for the whole DOD. The original terminals consisted of a Model 28 ASR teletypewriter, an IBM card reader/punch, and a refrigerator-sized electronics package made by IBM. Transmission was synchronous using a modified Fieldata code. All transmissions were encrypted. This was somewhat to the dismay of the materiel people, who had started out with the card transceivers in their Base Supply offices; the AUTODIN terminals had to be locked up in secure Base Communications buildings because of the encryption equipment. So the supply people had to carry their cards between buildings on the base. There were also a few magnetic tape AUTODIN terminals. This was in the days before IBMs tape format became a de facto standard of the industry; so the terminals had to be designed to read and write the kind of tapes appropriate to the kind of computer they were to be used with. AUTODIN provided both message switching (i.e. store-and-forward) and circuit switching a la Telex. The switching centers for AUTODIN used computers made by RCA, originally discrete-transistor machines contemporary with the RCA 301-501-601 line, later replaced by machines of RCAs Spectra 70 line. Having to replace all those original computers after only five years or so must have been terribly galling to old Western Union hands, as some of the company's own offices were still using teleprinters made by Morkrum-Kleinschmidt prior to 1930. [Note 2 by Jim Haynes] This system was Western Union's Plan 55, based on paper tape store and forward technology. The switching centers used a combination of electromechanical and vacuum-tube electronic technology. Cross-office transmission was at 200 wpm, requiring electronic transmitting and receiving distributors and parallel-input reperforators. Plan 55 was superseded by AUTODIN when the latter acquired Teletype as well as punched card capabilities. [3] Perhaps Western Union hoped to use Teleprinter Corp. to free itself from dependence on AT&Ts Teletype subsidiary. W.U. had made some previous efforts to build its own teletypewriters. As things turned out the Teleprinter product, MITE (Miniature Integrated Teleprinter Equipment), was popular with the military for its small size and weight but never achieved much of a commercial market. ------------------------------ And now, here as some bonus reading is an excerpt from Fortune Magazine a year earlier, in 1959: This is excerpted from {Fortune Magazine}, March 1959 - an excellent article with nice pictures, "Western Union, by Grace of FCC and AT&T". Many legends have blurred the history of Western Union. Contrary to widely held belief, for instance, the company was not founded by Samuel F. B. Morse, the portrait painter who invented the first telegraph. Initially, as a matter of fact, it didn't even use the Morse patents and, relatively speaking, it was a latecomer to the field. Morse did his pioneering work on the telegraph in the 1830's. By 1850 there were fifty telegraph companies operating between various cities in the U.S., most of them with licenses on the Morse patents. In 1846, Royal E. House of Vermont had come up with a device that permitted the electrical impulse to imprint letters and numbers on tape, eliminating the dot-dash symbols. The House printer became the basis for a new company financed and operated by a group of Rochester[3] investors headed by Hiram Sibley. This was the New York & Mississippi Valley Telegraph Co., formed to link upper New York State to St. Louis. But even as Sibley's plans began to unfold, the competition in the telegraph industry became chaotic. Some cities were being served by three competing patent systems. Meanwhile the war in rates was ruinous. Sibley had a simple solution: consolidate all the telegraph companies into one. New York & Mississippi Valley Telegraph was reincorporated as the Western Union Co., with licenses on both Morse and House patents, in New York State in 1856. Its avowed purpose was to bring together into one company all the telegraph firms then operating beyond the Hudson -- hence 'Western' Union. Western Union grew at a fantastic rate. The New York company gobbled up hundreds of competing telegraph companies, made exclusive, and advantageous, deals with the railroads, and reached all the way to the Pacific Coast. By 1866 it had a virtual monopoly. In the first ten years of its life its capital had grown from $500,000 to $41 million. -The war with the telephone- The company's first brush with the telephone came in 1877, when it imperiously declined an opportunity to buy the invention of Alexander Graham Bell for $100,000. Soon after, Western Union decided to enter the telephone field via the American Speaking Telephone Co., which would exploit voice-communication patents by Elisha Gray [1] and Thomas Edison. The Western Union system was quite as good as Bell's, and Western Union began to grow in the telephone field. But in 1878, Bell sued for patent infringement. As part of the settlement, reached the next year, Western Union agreed to stay out of the voice business and Bell agreed to stay out of the telegraph business. But Bell slipped out of the agreement when it formed, in 1885, a new company called the American Telephone & Telegraph Co. In 1909, AT&T won stock control of Western Union by purchasing the shares held by the estate of Jay Gould. Theodore Vail, a distant cousin of the Alfred Vail who had helped Morse start his telegraph line, was president of Bell at the time, and he planned to integrate the two companies. To begin with he had himself elected president of Western Union and began using it to promote the telephone by encouraging people to phone in their telegrams. Western Union had already developed a private-wire business with a volume of $3 million annually, and AT&T took this over, too, adding it to the small private-wire service it had developed on its own. In 1914, to avert government antitrust action, AT&T disposed of its Western Union holdings, but stayed in the private-wire business. After AT&T and Western Union parted, expansion of the telgraph system merely kept pace with the increase in population. By the Thirties the business was contracting. More and more Americans forsook telegrams for long-distance phone calls and air mail. Western Union was now bothered also by competition from the Postal Telegraph Service, a system formed in the 1880's. Postal had been taken over by Sosthenes Behn of IT&T in 1928, and thereafter fought Western Union hard. As if this were not enough, AT&T introduced in 1931 its TWX service, whereby subscribers could have direct telegraphic connection with each other through a central exchange. (AT&T invited Western Union to join it in the TWX network, and later even considered selling the system to Western Union, but Western Union couldn't pay the price.) In the early Thirties a debate began on whether there was enough telegraph business to support two telegraph companies -- meaning Western Union and Postal, but not AT&T, which most people thought of as a telephone service only. The debate was not resolved until 1943, when Congress authorized a merger of the two companies. An amendment to the same law authorized Western Union to buy the telegraphic services of AT&T -- but it did not make it mandatory for AT&T to sell. ---------------------------- The following material comes from a {Business Week} article of approximately ten years earlier than the {Fortune} article: Nov 19, 1949. Western Union's only all-telegraph competitor of recent years in the domestic field, Postal Telegraph, Inc. started in the 1880s. It competed with Western Union with indifferent success, but Western Union was prevented by law from buying its competitor. Finally, during the war, it became obvious that Postal couldn't go on. Operations for several years had been dependent on RFC [2] loans. So Congress finally permitted Western Union to absorb its competitor (BW - Aug. 7 '43, p102). Western Union was probably not too eager to acquire Postal in 1943. For one thing, Postal's facilities partly duplicated its own. Further it had (1) to take over Postal's $12.5-million debt to RFC, and (2) to guarantee jobs for most of Postal's staff for four years, despite its own heavy labor costs. However, Western Union didn't have much choice. Otherwise the government might have taken over Postal. Another competitor is the government-operated communications systems. The armed services and the State Department have their own networks of 'record' communications (any means of communication that produces a permanent record on paper) ..." [This seems like a silly remark to me, since the government-operated systems were based on private wires leased from the common carriers.] [Note 1 from Jim Haynes ] This is the Elisha Gray who lost the race to the Patent Office to Bell. I remember in the 50s or so there was a "Gray Telephone Pay Station Co.", making pay stations almost identical in appearance to the Bell phones, for the independent companies. I wonder if this is connected with the Gray Mfg. Co. that was listed as a Western Union affiliate in another article? [Note 2 from Jim Haynes ] RFC = Reconstruction Finance Corporation, a Depression-era government agency in the business of lending money to business firms to help them get back on their feet. [Note 3 from Jim Haynes ] I wonder if the late Larry Lippman, in clearing out the Western Union office there, was aware that Western Union was started in Rochester. ------------------------- *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. This Internet discussion group is making it available without profit to group members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of literary, educational, political, and economic issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. I believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner, in one instance, Business Week Magazine, 1958 and 1960; in the other, Fortune Magazine (Time/Life publications) 1959. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml --------------------------- [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Indeed, Larry Lippman knew about this connection. I exchanged considerable email with him in 1990-91 when he had accepted the contract to clean out the old Western Union office in Rochester. I am very sorry I was unable to go and work with him on it; he invited me twice to do so but my health (at that time, an unrelated affair compared to my present brain aneurysm) prevented me from joining him. PAT] ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. 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