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I came across an interesting article from someone who claimed to work on a project starting in the early 1980s that was essentially a scalable, firmware upgradable network dedicated to carrying digital data called ACS (Advanced Communication System) link to Part 1 of 8 can be found here. If you don't like surfing through hyperlinks then just go to https://talkingpointz.com/how-bell-missed-the-internet-1/ and to go to the next article just replace '1' with another number up to '8.'
Anyway, in summary Bell System wanted to beat ARPNET and other networks into cornering the digital commercial market at the time (fax, electronic mail, WAN and ect) while also finding a solution offload all of their existing clients who were clogging up their current switches with dedicated lines along with other special requests to carry digital services. They went about trying to create a foundation for a network a decade or more ahead of its time failing spectacularly and creating one of the most costly failures in telecom history barely anyone talks about in the process setting up AT&T (the original parent to the Bell System not its SBC acquired incarnation) to fade away post breakup.
Now what if the Bell System was able to scale back on those early ambitions, perhaps ditching network cards that didn't have dedicated boot ROMs that crashed often. Perhaps just worked on creating technologies in conjunction with Tymnet or some other existing digital network at the time in return for marketing and licensing it as their own (ala. DOS on the IBM PC). If this network was not divested due to antitrust as AT&T can argue that this dedicated system not predicated on POTs like their long distance service how would you imagine AT&T and this system play in shaping the internet until this day?