Chapter 13 - Data Communications: Adaptation 1979-1986
13.10 Other Data Communication Firms
By 1985, the T-1 multiplexer market was no secret. Dataquest projected that sales would exceed $300 million in 1988, nearly a third of the sales that were projected for the once fast growing statistical multiplexer market. All the leading statistical multiplexer companies would be forced to offer T-1 multiplexers, although most, like Codex, would turn to OEM arrangements. Infotron and Paradyne began by reselling the Datatel product for example.
What all the Data Communication firms missed, however, was that the T-1 multiplexer was not just a way to save costs and, maybe, even tiptoe into the voice market, but into a market much larger than their smaller modem and multiplexer markets. T-1 reflected the important transition from analog to digital communication networks for corporations, networks essential to the rapidly escalating needs of corporations to interconnect their computers and peripherals and, in the near future, to interconnect their islands of LANs. But not everyone was blind to the sea change underway