Prague
In 1989, with the revolution, things changed dramatically. Czechoslovakia was able to put in a 9,600 bps leased line to Linz in Austria and join the European Academic Research Network (EARN), the European BITNET. In Bratislava, another school started using UUCP links over dial-up lines to Vienna and became part of EUnet.
An important breakthrough for Gruntorad came in 1990, when IBM donated a 3090 mainframe as part of the IBM Academic Initiative. Starting with Czechoslovakia, but later including other countries such as Hungary and Poland, plunking supercomputers down in key locations gave an important boost to Gruntorad' s networking efforts (you can't build a shopping mall without upgrading the roads around it).
EARN had expanded to include seven other facilities in Prague. Efforts were underway to extend the national backbone to Bratslava and other cities. From zero users in 1989, the system grew to over 1,500 users by the summer of 1991.
Gruntorad is much more than just the BITNET manager, however. He was leading the effort to install a national networking infrastructure. He wanted to see UUCP, NJE (for BITNET), and TCP/IP protocols all sharing an infrastructure of leased lines.
Leased lines, as in many European countries, are quite expensive in Czechoslovakia. A 9,600 bps line from Prague to Brno, for example, costs 36,000 crowns per month (U.S. $1,242/ month). With monthly salaries averaging 3,000 crowns, a leased line becomes a major line item in the budget. The PTT didn't have the infrastructure in place to properly support digital lines, so a 64 kbps line would be provided by ganging up six 9,600 bps line.
Although I managed to time my departure with what appeared to be the majority of the Jehovah's Witnesses, some other deity must have been on my side. Not having bought a ticket allowed me, through some mysterious bureaucratic rule, to bypass the hundreds of people waiting to check in and report to the excess baggage window.
The burly representative from Czechoslovakian State Airlines who sold me my Swissair ticket even smiled when I suggested she should feel free to close the airport after I had gone—a sure solution
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