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• One of the most expensive parts of Usenet was the telephone bills to send Netnews around the world. A few companies, notably AT&T, DEC, and Philips, accumulated huge telephone bills, largely because their system administrators set up the links first and asked forgiveness later.
• In 1985, Lauren Weinstein conceived of the Stargate Project. His idea was to broadcast Netnews via satellite. He worked a deal with Tempo Television, the company that uplinked WTBS-TV to satellite and national cable TV distribution, to include Netnews in the vertical interval of WTBS, so that anyone with the proper decoding box could collect the Netnews and feed it into their system. A 4800 baud link was set up, feeding all moderated newsgroups (mod.*) through the satellite.
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