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> In many nations, the total minutes of international Telex still today exceeds that of international telephone traffic. I have a feeling this write-up is a l

> In many nations, the total minutes of international Telex still today exceeds that of international telephone traffic. I have a feeling this write-up is a little bit older than 2017 ;) It's fascinating though! I was only young when telex was around. Never had hands-on experience with it. When I worked for the local phone company in the late 90s we still had a telex exchange for a handful of customers but it's long gone now.

lqet 6y ago
Here is a list of the availability of telegram services around the world, with no usage numbers though: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worldwide_use_of_telegrams_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worldwide_use_of_telegrams_by_...
- pndy 6y ago
  List says that telegram service existed in Poland till 2018 (160 characters message delivered in 6hrs for a price of 43,05PLN - almost 9,50€ and 11,50USD by today's rates [1] - it simply couldn't compete with SMS services anymore which become really cheap or in some service provider cases free) but telex was shut down by Polish Post in 2007, acc to Polish wiki [2]. I still have some telegram wedding invitations somewhere in the attic on something that looks like stationery (bit more fancy than standard form). [1] - https://www.radiozet.pl/Technologia/Poczta-Polska-rezygnuje-z-telegramu https://www.radiozet.pl/Technologia/Poczta-Polska-rezygnuje-... [2] - https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teleks https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teleks
  - Jendrej 6y ago
    I think telegram is not equal to telex. From what I’m reading, telegram messages were initially sent between offices by telegraph. In later years, the word has come to simply mean a message that is delivered by the post quickly, regardless of their internal transfer method between offices (which could be telex or later the internet). The list may not be wrong, but it is not on topic.
    - pndy 6y ago
      > I think telegram is not equal to telex I tried to point out that; at least here in Poland these services were running independently since one was terminated earlier and other one much later - thus, these of course weren't same but the technology used to deliver messages could be. Polish wikipedia mentions telex for telegrams and later WAN network run by Polish Post; smaller offices in the past would receive messages by phone and then manually fill out form that would be delivered to the recipient.
- GekkePrutser 6y ago
  Yeah but stating that the amount of telegrams being higher than the number of international calls... I just doubt it in this day and age of mobile phones.
- parliament32 6y ago
  Telegram and telex are different things.
apelapan 6y ago
As recently as 2012 I was involved in a commercial aviation project where one of the external system interfaces was a telex system for meal orders. We had to format the outgoing requests accordingly and accept responses, but actual transmission was handled by a IP2Telex bridge elsewhere on the network. I have no idea how things looked at the other end. Perhaps it was all a sequence of bridges, with no real telex anywhere on the path.
- GekkePrutser 6y ago
  That's highly possible actually, we also have some virtual fax stuff in our environment, because "fax" is a legal thing (on the level of a registered letter) in some countries - similar to Telex as mentioned in the article. EDI orders don't qualify for this protection in these countries but "faxes" do. However IP lines don't officially support fax anymore, and it's hard to get analog lines these days. So virtual fax became a thing.

lqet 6y ago

Here is a list of the availability of telegram services around the world, with no usage numbers though: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worldwide_use_of_telegrams_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worldwide_use_of_telegrams_by_...

pndy 6y ago
List says that telegram service existed in Poland till 2018 (160 characters message delivered in 6hrs for a price of 43,05PLN - almost 9,50€ and 11,50USD by today's rates [1] - it simply couldn't compete with SMS services anymore which become really cheap or in some service provider cases free) but telex was shut down by Polish Post in 2007, acc to Polish wiki [2]. I still have some telegram wedding invitations somewhere in the attic on something that looks like stationery (bit more fancy than standard form). [1] - https://www.radiozet.pl/Technologia/Poczta-Polska-rezygnuje-z-telegramu https://www.radiozet.pl/Technologia/Poczta-Polska-rezygnuje-... [2] - https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teleks https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teleks
- Jendrej 6y ago
  I think telegram is not equal to telex. From what I’m reading, telegram messages were initially sent between offices by telegraph. In later years, the word has come to simply mean a message that is delivered by the post quickly, regardless of their internal transfer method between offices (which could be telex or later the internet). The list may not be wrong, but it is not on topic.
  - pndy 6y ago
    > I think telegram is not equal to telex I tried to point out that; at least here in Poland these services were running independently since one was terminated earlier and other one much later - thus, these of course weren't same but the technology used to deliver messages could be. Polish wikipedia mentions telex for telegrams and later WAN network run by Polish Post; smaller offices in the past would receive messages by phone and then manually fill out form that would be delivered to the recipient.
GekkePrutser 6y ago
Yeah but stating that the amount of telegrams being higher than the number of international calls... I just doubt it in this day and age of mobile phones.
parliament32 6y ago
Telegram and telex are different things.

apelapan 6y ago

As recently as 2012 I was involved in a commercial aviation project where one of the external system interfaces was a telex system for meal orders. We had to format the outgoing requests accordingly and accept responses, but actual transmission was handled by a IP2Telex bridge elsewhere on the network. I have no idea how things looked at the other end. Perhaps it was all a sequence of bridges, with no real telex anywhere on the path.

GekkePrutser 6y ago
That's highly possible actually, we also have some virtual fax stuff in our environment, because "fax" is a legal thing (on the level of a registered letter) in some countries - similar to Telex as mentioned in the article. EDI orders don't qualify for this protection in these countries but "faxes" do. However IP lines don't officially support fax anymore, and it's hard to get analog lines these days. So virtual fax became a thing.