Summary

  • Datacom’s local BBS and international mail gateway had different limits; scheduled exchange did not mean continuous IP access.
  • Records range from Datacom’s December 1994 start claim to other early-1995 accounts, while describing a cadence that changed over time.

A mailbox had a timetable

In December 1994, a message preserved by the Network Startup Resource Center described Datacom’s 16-line online bulletin board. The BBS offered domestic email, conferences, file libraries and databases. Its basic subscription included unlimited domestic email but limited international email. Datacom said it had asked the Institute for Global Communications (IGC) to call its node every day except weekends. The outside mail path therefore ran to a schedule, with another organization initiating the exchange. The message also said Datacom had not yet gained experience with international email or Usenet exchange. This is the provider’s description of its offer and plan, not a traffic log. Datacom/IGC note, NSRC archive, 15 December 1994

The price list marked another boundary. The same note gave one-time account charges by customer type, then monthly charges of USD 20 for businesses and USD 15 for others. Domestic email was unlimited; international email was limited. International fax, long sessions and extra disk space could cost more. In March 1995, Datacom described a USD 5–20 monthly range and a 75% discount for students and non-profits. These are separate snapshots, not a stable national tariff. They show that local messaging and international exchange were different products with different costs. Datacom update, NSRC archive, 27 March 1995

The date depends on what counted

The records do not yield one launch day. Datacom wrote in March 1995 that its Internet email service had begun in December 1994 and that IGC now called once daily; it hoped to move to two or three exchanges a day. A U.S. Embassy cable written in January 1996 instead recalled Datacom approaching the ambassador in January 1995 to try an embryonic email system. The embassy opened an experimental account whose messages moved once a day through a California dial-up facility. A Mongolia FAQ puts the first email link in January or February 1995 and says it was not yet continuous around the clock. These accounts may describe different milestones—a service start, an embassy account or a public link—but the record does not resolve them. Embassy cable, 28 January 1996; Mongolia FAQ, Oliver Corff and contributors

A 1997 IDRC report adds the technical model. Datacom had developed PC-Mail locally from software adapted from Russian programs; the file-transfer system handled Cyrillic and could be adapted to UUCP. The report dates the UUCP dial-up gateway to late 1994 and says it carried Internet email and newsgroups through IGC. It recalls two transfers a week at first, increasing as users joined. That differs from Datacom’s daily-exchange account in March 1995. The difference may reflect a changing service or different stages; no call logs here settle it. Geoff Long, IDRC report on PAN Mongolia

A route was not a permanent line

The satellite transition had its own sequence. On 4 January 1996, a Sprint engineer reported that the Mongolian link was up but Datacom still needed a default route back. The next day, an NSF message reported 50 successful pings to a Ulaanbaatar router interface, with high round-trip times. That verifies a test path to the router, not that every customer could use every service. Datacom’s 18 January message says its Internet centre opened the day before at a ceremony attended by more than 100 people from 60 organizations. The IDRC report calls January 1996 the first permanent Internet connection. The records describe distinct milestones: circuit activation, routing, a test, an opening and a later institutional label. NSF/Sprint, NSRC archive, 5 January 1996; Datacom opening notice, NSRC archive, 18 January 1996

Store-and-forward email can wait; interactive access cannot. A scheduled exchange connects people across borders without providing an always-available route for browsing, interactive services or immediate replies. The BBS’s 16 lines describe local dial-in capacity, not 16 international links. An email account also does not prove a customer was online at a particular moment. Mongolia’s connection history is therefore a sequence from local messaging and scheduled external exchange to a routed satellite link later described as permanent.

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