> "Not only were links within North America difficult to establish, but Dik Winter, from the Netherlands, describes how the first cross Atlantic Usenet link was delayed until 1982-1983 because of the difficulty of acquiring an autodialer modem that conformed to European standards. The mail link ... connected the site decvax at Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) in the U. S. with mcvax at Mathematisch Centrum (MC) in the Netherlands."
> "CWI established the first connection between Europe and the Internet on November 17, 1988”
Not at all true; I used to connect from the Centre Mondial in Paris via transpac to MIT-Multics to read my email in 1982. And that only worked because those links already existed.
suggests all may be true: TRANSPAC was X.25 (presumably terminated similarly at MIT? I know nothing about ITU.), USENET piggybacked on voice networks, and 1988 was presumably when regular IP packets started being routed.
> "CWI established the first connection between Europe and the Internet on November 17, 1988."
https://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/613/53...
> "Not only were links within North America difficult to establish, but Dik Winter, from the Netherlands, describes how the first cross Atlantic Usenet link was delayed until 1982-1983 because of the difficulty of acquiring an autodialer modem that conformed to European standards. The mail link ... connected the site decvax at Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) in the U. S. with mcvax at Mathematisch Centrum (MC) in the Netherlands."
Télétel was 1980.
a cold war poisson d'avril: https://godfatherof.nl/kremvax.html