But while MCI was trying to lease lines from Bell operating companies and resell telephone service, AutEx was figuring out how to arbitrage telecommunications another way.
The programmers who created the original AutEx system, which ran on two huge Xerox Sigma 9 mainframes in lockstep mode (either one could take over if the other went down), have long since retired.
AutEx was founded by my father, rolled out right at the dawn of the computer age in 1968, and can truly claim to be the first eCommerce business: the first computer network used to make money.