> One of the claims of the ATM camp was that it had inherently superior performance to IP due to the small cell size (and hence would better serve video and voi

> One of the claims of the ATM camp was that it had inherently superior performance to IP due to the small cell size (and hence would better serve video and voice). This was arguably true in 1994 but turned out to be irrelevant as faster links became available and a combination of new router designs and Moore’s law enabled high-speed routing to flourish For those readers young enough to have never used a landline, know that this is bullshit. No VOIP (or cell) link I have ever used today achieves similar latency to a landline call in the US in the mid 90s. Ignoring latency, peak voice quality is far higher than the 8kHz uLaw that was used then, but the 95 percentile quality was much better back then as well. The flip side is that VOIP is nearly free by the standards of POTS costs in the 90s. This is true for local phone service and even more true as you compare to long-distance and international. Had the Bell heads won out, POTS probably would have come down in real-terms (also a good chance that the quality would have gone up as technology enabled it), but there's no way it would be as cheap as it is today.