born too late to explore the analog era long distance networkborn just in time to browse dank memes
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born too late to explore the analog era long distance network
born just in time to browse dank memes -
anatil e\x9f\xf0\xbc\xa5n lu\x00lreplied to anatil e\x9f\xf0\xbc\xa5n lu\x00l last edited by
unless that 2600 controlled stuff in ukraine still exists :memer:
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Riley S. Faelanreplied to anatil e\x9f\xf0\xbc\xa5n lu\x00l last edited by
@natalie Doesn't exist in Ukraine, but it does still exist in Russian Far East. The frequencies are different, though; USSR was capable of homebrewing its own analog telephone network in the early years. Also, from what I hear, the long distance networking equipment was pretty much all upgraded to Western SS7-compatible stuff back in the nineties so old-school methods may let you browse around in a single oblast, but not between oblasts, and in some places, possibly not even between scattered small towns.
If you look carefully, old-style landline POTS networks are probably also a thing in some parts of Africa (but it varies wildly, Africa being a very big place), some parts of India (but it varies wildly, India being a very big place), some parts of South America (but it varies wildly, South America being a very big place), and some parts of the Himalayan plateau such as Nepal. One of the curious effects of the postcolonial world is, there's places where the colonial authorities built telephone networks and then left, and if they were replaced by extractive oligarchies, then often there wasn't a real political or economical incentive to upgrade the old systems, so if they were maintained, they still work as in the 1940s and 1950s, before the Big Colonial Exits became fashionable.
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anatil e\x9f\xf0\xbc\xa5n lu\x00lreplied to Riley S. Faelan last edited by
@[email protected] yeah that was kind of my feeling that there might be some of this equipment still lurking in less economically fortunate parts of the world. do you have any sources on the russian far east stuff? has anyone explored it?
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Riley S. Faelanreplied to anatil e\x9f\xf0\xbc\xa5n lu\x00l last edited by
@natalie I have friends. I can understand Russian. I hear people saying stuff.
For context, Russia's Far East is pretty much an extractive colonial expanse. Most of the industrial investment in these parts went into the mining towns and the railway network necessary to get the mined products out and into factories. The mining systems were aggressively developed in 1950s–1960s, and much less so after Brezhnev's times. This sort of thing tends to leave a distinct pattern to a culture's technohistory.
In contrast to some parts of Africa, where POTS telephone networks were allowed to fall into disrepair after the colonial authorists left, and then the developing local business pushed for building new cellphone networks to replace the old landlines — Somaliland being a beautiful example —, a quirk of Russian bureaucratic culture is it considers telephones rather important for getting arbitrary orders from Teh Up Above at a moment's notice, so there has always been money in maintaining Russia's telephone networks. And good maintenance can often ward off upgrades, depending.