graph key and typewriter technology. Telegrams are a service offering used when a teletype machine is used to create, transmit, and print a message for a third party. Telegrams ceased to be used in the early 1990s. Telegrams, Telex, and TWX effectively died out in the 1990s. AT&T is said to have transmitted its last telegram in 1991. So the cannibaliza- tion of the telegraph by the telephone took almost a century. It's almost too complicated to go into, but along the way, AT&T and the RBOCs had, and continue to have, great challenges with anything outside telephone or voice services. The combined entities had deep and credible resources and capabilities without equal, except perhaps IBM. However, getting these resources to market was impossible because restrictions on AT&T equipment manufacture prohibited sale of their products to any other than the former BOCs. One result of divestiture and deregulation freed AT&T to sell computer equip- ment in competition with IBM and others. But coincidentally with the historic event in the telecom industry, Intel and Microsoft blindsided and blew away the dreams of the white-coat, MIS department main- frame computer industry, and those who would see AT&T as a possible competitor to IBM. Setting all the issues of selling computer or computer-like equipment aside, the former AT&T and new entities had been and would con- tinue to be dominant in a small and growing market for what started out as computer communications or data services. After all, AT&T long lines were first to install digital transmission and switching equip- ment in their network. Earlier FCC decisions had clearly and cleanly marked a dividing line between equipment and services. On the communications side a piece of equipment specifically defined as a customer services unit (CSU) faced another piece of equipment called a data services unit (DSU). The CSU was part of the computer system. The telephone company installed the DSU and included an amount 2 INTERNET AND TELECOM: A BRIEF HISTORY in the monthly service