TELECOM Digest began publication in August, 1981. The Digest was started as an offshoot of the Human Nets discussion group. For more information you should read the file 'old.hello.message' which was the introductory letter given to new subscribers for many years. Also read 'newuser.letter' which is an updated version of the same letter to new readers. You might also want to view 'first.issue.cover'. Telecom Digest was founded by Jon Solomon, who was the moderator until October, 1988. During 1987 he was assisted with a few issues by Jim Dixon. He began the Digest while at Rutgers University, and it has been published at several sites including Rutgers, MIT, Boston University, and most recently at Northwestern University. I took over moderation in October, 1988 while the Digest was at BU, and moved it to Northwestern in February, 1989. In the beginning, the Digest was published only every few days; whenever enough messages accumulated to do so. The massive explosion of interest in telecom related matters following the 1983 divestiture caused the traffic to become much heavier. Throughout 1989, often times three issues per day were required. The Usenet comp.dcom.telecom group was unrelated at first. The Digest messages went there beginning in 1982, I beleive. For a couple years in the 1986-89 period, the Usenet gateway to comp.dcom.telecom was managed by Chip Rosenthal; when he was no longer able to do this, I took it over and maintain it from the accuvax machine at Northwestern. This change took place late in 1989. These archives were likewise stored in a variety of places, including Rutgers, MIT, Boston University, and now back at MIT again. During the 1987-89 period, they were at Boston, on the cs.bu.edu machine. They were relocated to lcs.mit.edu in January, 1990. Limited sets of archives also exist elsewhere: some readers have very complete sets; Northwestern University has volume 9; as does the Net Exchange BBS on Telenet, and NYCENET (New York City Board of Education), which began receiving the Digest for their users during 1989. I became a regular contributor to the Digest in 1987, while I was a user of the Portal Communications Service. Some contributors have been reading and writing to the Digest since 1981 however. Patrick Townson TELECOM Digest Moderator January 20, 1990