Milestone-Proposal:URUPAC
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Docket #:2023-21
This proposal has been submitted for review.
To the proposer’s knowledge, is this achievement subject to litigation? No
Is the achievement you are proposing more than 25 years old? Yes
Is the achievement you are proposing within IEEE’s designated fields as defined by IEEE Bylaw I-104.11, namely: Engineering, Computer Sciences and Information Technology, Physical Sciences, Biological and Medical Sciences, Mathematics, Technical Communications, Education, Management, and Law and Policy. Yes
Did the achievement provide a meaningful benefit for humanity? Yes
Was it of at least regional importance? Yes
Has an IEEE Organizational Unit agreed to pay for the milestone plaque(s)? Yes
Has the IEEE Section(s) in which the plaque(s) will be located agreed to arrange the dedication ceremony? Yes
Has the IEEE Section in which the milestone is located agreed to take responsibility for the plaque after it is dedicated? Yes
Has the owner of the site agreed to have it designated as an IEEE Milestone? Yes
Year or range of years in which the achievement occurred:
1977 to 1995
Title of the proposed milestone:
LOCALLY BUILT TELEX AND PUBLIC INTERNET ACCESS IN URUGUAY, 1977 to 1995
Plaque citation summarizing the achievement and its significance: Text absolutely limited by plaque dimensions to 70 words; 60 is preferable for aesthetic reasons.
Supported by Uruguay's national telecom ANTEL, a team of brilliant engineers, trained at the Universidad de la República, working in their companies INTERFASE and CONTROLES, designed and built electronic, programmable Telex exchanges. By 1980, they were reliably handling international traffic. In 1990, a re-configured system provided X.25 packet switching (URUPAC); The addition of TCP/IP in 1995 gave the Uruguayan public Internet access.It was decommissioned in 2012.
200-250 word abstract describing the significance of the technical achievement being proposed, the person(s) involved, historical context, humanitarian and social impact, as well as any possible controversies the advocate might need to review.
Back in 1976, having exhausted the optimization of the available manual and automatic (strowger-type) facilities, ANTEL’s ( the state-owned local telecommunications utility) technical section in charge of the growing Telex service--led by Eng Juan Carlos Miguez and later by his assistant Eng Rodolfo Fariello—boldly decided to commission the design and construction of a full- electronic program controlled exchange to serve the public traffic to the incipient electronic industry in Uruguay. Juan Miguez had previously worked for 3 years in Siemens, Munich in the full-electronic Telex EDS project and got to know -from the inside- the realities of developments and sales of non-existent products based on nice brochures. Antel authorities approved the concept, which included an up-front payment to partially cover the long design and construction phase. The system was specified and a consortium formed by the companies CONTROLES (HW oriented, formerly GMS) and INTERFASE (SW oriented, formerly ISIS) was selected in a public bid. A generation of brilliant Engineers--Juan Grompone, Nestor Mace, Jaime Jerusalmi, Enrique Salles, among others--educated at the public University UDELAR under the excellent mentorship of Professor Ricardo Perez Iribarren, had founded those enterprises that took the challenge. With ANTEL’s technical guidance and financial support, they successfully had the first 128-line prototype in service in 1980; quickly expanding to several 1024 units satisfying -through major international carriers- all international traffic demands and giving reliable service to the whole country. In 1990, a similar system was configured as an X-25 packet switch providing national and international traffic; TCP/IP was incorporated in 1995, giving the country its first public access to Internet. Internet growth made those services obsolete and they were decommissioned in 2012. This endeavor was an exceptional proof of applying good engineering principles and practices to the develop of advanced products, with no previous knowledge or experience: just an appropriate specification of the needs and the international standards to follow. In summary, the support of the state-owned Telecom, ANTEL was fundamental, and the locally designed, and built equipment gave the country reliable, modern, digital communications for years. It also resulted in a spillover to the whole local Electronic Industry, which resulted not only in engineering and technological jobs creation, but also in a plethora of successful products for the local market, some of which have been also exported.
The project is also mentioned in a book that could noy be found:
Sutz, J. (1986) El auge de la industria electrónica profesional uruguaya: raíces y perspectivas, Cuadernos del CIESU Nº 52, Ediciones de la Banda Oriental, Montevideo.
IEEE technical societies and technical councils within whose fields of interest the Milestone proposal resides.
Computer Society, Communications Society
In what IEEE section(s) does it reside?
IEEE Uruguay
IEEE Organizational Unit(s) which have agreed to sponsor the Milestone:
IEEE Organizational Unit(s) paying for milestone plaque(s):
Unit: Uruguay Section
Senior Officer Name: Juan Gutierrez
IEEE Organizational Unit(s) arranging the dedication ceremony:
Unit: Juan Gutierrez
Senior Officer Name: Juan Gutierrez
IEEE section(s) monitoring the plaque(s):
IEEE Section: Juan Gutierrez
IEEE Section Chair name: Juan Gutierrez
Milestone proposer(s):
Proposer name: Juan Carlos Miguez
Proposer email: Proposer's email masked to public
Proposer name: Juan Grompone
Proposer email: Proposer's email masked to public
Please note: your email address and contact information will be masked on the website for privacy reasons. Only IEEE History Center Staff will be able to view the email address.
Street address(es) and GPS coordinates in decimal form of the intended milestone plaque site(s):
1075 Guatemala St, Montevideo -34.892010598440095, -56.19430159825124
Describe briefly the intended site(s) of the milestone plaque(s). The intended site(s) must have a direct connection with the achievement (e.g. where developed, invented, tested, demonstrated, installed, or operated, etc.). A museum where a device or example of the technology is displayed, or the university where the inventor studied, are not, in themselves, sufficient connection for a milestone plaque.
Please give the address(es) of the plaque site(s) (GPS coordinates if you have them). Also please give the details of the mounting, i.e. on the outside of the building, in the ground floor entrance hall, on a plinth on the grounds, etc. If visitors to the plaque site will need to go through security, or make an appointment, please give the contact information visitors will need. The intention is to put the plaque in the public entrance hall of the “Tower of Telecommunications” of ANTEL, the institution which enabled this development and used it -and which most probably will be there for many years. Furthermore, in this case we are not talking of a massive achievement in a place, like a Hydroelectric Powerhouse, but of a project which is mainly a implementation of hardware and software, which does not need to be associated with a physical place. The collocation of the plaque in the public-acsesible hall of the Tower of Telecommunications -which is much visited by public and the rest of the Telecommunication enterprises operating in Uruguay seems most appropriate.
Are the original buildings extant?
The building where those telecommunications switches were put into service does exist, but it is an old building in the center of the city, where realstate is most valuable and candidate to be soon demolished to make room for a new highrise, Its uncertain future makes it unadequate for mounting the Milestone plaque.The two companies [CONTROLES and INTERFASE still exist in their own buildings, but their owners are aging and they risk being adquired by some national or international corporation, so the name and purpose of the building with the plaque might practically lose any connection with the project, the object of this Milestone; which by iys nature as a fundamentally software achievement is loosely tied to a physical place,
Details of the plaque mounting:
in the ground floor public entrance hall
How is the site protected/secured, and in what ways is it accessible to the public?
Its the public entrance hall of a government building, open to everyone during working hours and with adequate security
Who is the present owner of the site(s)?
Uruguay's Telecom, ANTEL
What is the historical significance of the work (its technological, scientific, or social importance)? If personal names are included in citation, include justification here. (see section 6 of Milestone Guidelines)
What obstacles (technical, political, geographic) needed to be overcome?
For this kind of electronic and software projects, there are neither geographical nor environmental constraints.
URUPAC was an initiative of the national telecommunications company (ANTEL), putting together a project for the development of digital switches, first for telex and then for packets. The government support was essential in the first years of the project where technical conditions were met and the switches entered public service complying with all international requirements. The national telecom company originally trusted its technical Department and two young, and at the time barely known Engineering Firms were given a substantial monetary advancement to partially cover design costs for a product that would eventually be delivered years later. The project overcame multiple outstanding challenges, such as: Component supply limitations, finally brought from Japan; Architectural design to eliminate bouncy jittery signal interference from mechanical teletypes; Reliable high-load real time software system implementation over (early 1980’s) relatively slow microprocessors available. The bold and risky decision to support this technically committed development, raised a flagship project which boosted the Electronics and Software industries in Uruguay and would later result ‑among others- in development of Remote Terminal Units for SCADA systems extensively used by the Electric Utility in the country and exported to Venezuela and Chile. When the following administration took office, technical and financial risk policy shifted into global world class project purchase, instead of supporting investment on national technology development, cancelling further project advances.
What features set this work apart from similar achievements?
There Are few [if any?] intents of developing an advanced Telecommunications product in the third world ; They are generally made inside big companies in the U.S. Europe, Japan, China, etc. That means valid comparisons are difficult.
A Declarative Language, LEP, was developped and used to facilitate the routing configuration by the user, Antel. [ref: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/41866, included in the proposal]
The work was also recognized by an Award of AHCIET [Hispano-Americ Telecommunications Institutions Association, also included]
Supporting texts and citations to establish the dates, location, and importance of the achievement: Minimum of five (5), but as many as needed to support the milestone, such as patents, contemporary newspaper articles, journal articles, or chapters in scholarly books. 'Scholarly' is defined as peer-reviewed, with references, and published. You must supply the texts or excerpts themselves, not just the references. At least one of the references must be from a scholarly book or journal article. All supporting materials must be in English, or accompanied by an English translation.
Media:EL PAIS LEADERSHIP ANTEL.pdf
Media:EL PAIS liderazgo ANTEL.pdf
Supporting materials (supported formats: GIF, JPEG, PNG, PDF, DOC): All supporting materials must be in English, or if not in English, accompanied by an English translation. You must supply the texts or excerpts themselves, not just the references. For documents that are copyright-encumbered, or which you do not have rights to post, email the documents themselves to ieee-history@ieee.org. Please see the Milestone Program Guidelines for more information.
Media:Translation of BUSQUEDA.pdf
Media: Busqueda 20122012..pdf Media:321_Antel support.pdf
Media:CLEI XIII_1987_volumen 1_415-426.pdf
Media:321 Fariello Journal AIU.pdf
Media:T-SP-OB.714-2000-PDF-E.pdf
Media:321 support Antel translation.pdf
Media:321-AIU book translation.pdf
Please email a jpeg or PDF a letter in English, or with English translation, from the site owner(s) giving permission to place IEEE milestone plaque on the property, and a letter (or forwarded email) from the appropriate Section Chair supporting the Milestone application to ieee-history@ieee.org with the subject line "Attention: Milestone Administrator." Note that there are multiple texts of the letter depending on whether an IEEE organizational unit other than the section will be paying for the plaque(s).
Please recommend reviewers by emailing their names and email addresses to ieee-history@ieee.org. Please include the docket number and brief title of your proposal in the subject line of all emails.
