A chronicle of the early days of Chasque, Uruguay’s pioneering telematics service that laid the groundwork for Escaque. Original text by Roberto Bissio.
Chasque emerged more or less unprompted, almost instinctively, and for a time grew untamed, with no clear plan in place. Do you remember (those of you who’ve been around a while) the first television on the block? When we kids would crowd into a neighbour’s house just to watch anything at all—even Channel 10’s test pattern...
Something not unlike that took place around 1986 (the exact date lost to memory) when we installed our first modem at the Institute. A sturdy 1200 bps device running on an Apple II with a proud 64k of expanded memory. The idea was to connect with contributors to the “Third World Guide” and the Third World Network’s secretariat in Malaysia, and to tap into international databases at a modest cost. That meant dialling long-distance to Buenos Aires to link up with Delphi, a BBS with an X.25 line (akin to URUPAC), and from there reaching GeoNet, another BBS based in London, where we held our email account. At the time, even fax machines were still a novelty. Curious "neighbours"—colleagues at GRECMU across the street, friends from CIEDUR, SERPAJ and PLEMUU—would pop by, asking us to send off a message or dig up some nugget of information.
While cheaper than fax or phone calls—and uniquely capable of providing access to information and fledgling online “conferences”—the modem was a pricey gadget, and eventually a bit of order had to be restored: the machine was serving more outsiders than the Institute itself. The solution? A shared email inbox. But since it couldn’t bear the name of any specific organisation, we called it “Chasque.”
Usage steadily increased, and by 1989, thanks to an XT machine donated by Coasin and a four-modem card gifted by Alternex (the Brazilian Institute of Social and Economic Analysis’s telematics network), Chasque began receiving local calls round-the-clock and launched discussion forums for members. They could exchange mail among themselves, but messages beyond Uruguay still had to be handled manually—until ANTEL launched its packet-switching service and Chasque set up the country’s first dedicated computer-to-computer line through URUPAC. This enabled us to connect with Chasque mailboxes on Alternex (Brazil), IGC (USA) and GreenNet (UK). Backed by a dozen non-profit organisations, Chasque secured a $10,000 grant from the Dutch development agency Novib to establish the service properly.
In 1990, Chasque moved onto an AT286 running Waffle, a communications programme, and began automatically exchanging mail via the University of the Republic’s Central Computing Service (SECIU). Each night, the computer would “chat” with SECIU’s server: sending outgoing mail, receiving messages for Chasque users, and distributing them to the correct inboxes. All on its own. Suddenly, any Uruguayan—not just university students—could have an Internet address. The Third World Institute had long been active in Interdoc, an international network exploring emerging technologies in documentation and information services, and through it connected with other groups forming the Association for Progressive Communications (APC). In 1991, Chasque formally joined APC, with Alternex acting as its sponsor. By October, it was sending compressed mail bundles via the uucp protocol over long-distance calls to the US. Email became significantly more affordable. Chasque was no longer a hobbyist’s experiment, though it still relied on just two telephone lines.
Across the globe, others were also probing the possibilities of computer communication for communities in the Global South. Their guiding principle was simple: the cheaper the communication, the more it empowers those at a distance—from capitals, from global decision-making. And the capacity for “many-to-many” dialogue, unlike the “one-to-one” model of fax or the “one-to-many” of television, held enormous democratic potential. Around this time, preparations were underway for the Earth Summit. Organisations in Montevideo (ITeM), Nairobi (EconewsAfrica) and Penang (Third World Network) collaborated to form NGONET—a network focused on amplifying civic participation in global negotiations.
NGONET sought to bridge diplomatic processes and the nascent public debates unfolding across electronic networks. In March 1992, Chasque’s technicians travelled to New York to help set up a communications system during the Earth Summit’s final preparatory meeting—working alongside fellow APC members. In the years that followed, Chasque and NGONET would support similar setups at major global gatherings: the Earth Summit in Rio (1992), the International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo (1994), and the Social Development Summit in Copenhagen (1995). The technological heart of Chasque and NGONET was a SUN SparcStation server. Migrating to Unix, Chasque began offering international forum access to its users at the cost of a local call. That server ran day and night for more than five years without interruption.
By early 1992, a single kilobyte of email in Uruguay cost 35 cents. By August, thanks to faster modems and better compression, the cost for Chasque members had fallen to 15 cents. A group of member physicians launched what would become the Medical Network, now linking over 500 Uruguayan doctors with one another—and with the world.
In 1993, Chasque enabled the first consistent email connections between rural journalists and major media outlets in Montevideo. Still, Internet access in Uruguay remained limited to email. That changed in August 1993, when Chasque introduced real-time remote services—“telnet” and “gopher”—via an X.25 link to Alternex in Brazil. Email costs fell further to 5 cents per kilobyte, but online browsing was still prohibitively expensive: $4 per hour plus nearly $8 per “kilosegment” (around 50 kb). That November, ANTEL and ITeM signed a groundbreaking agreement allowing all URUPAC users to access Chasque services—email, telnet, and gopher included. It marked ANTEL’s first official Internet access offer.
In February 1994, a direct line was set up between SECIU and Chasque. In March, SECIU gained Internet access through ANTEL—but was barred from extending it to “third parties” like Chasque, which was extra-university. In July, the Third World Institute presented its case before the Chamber of Deputies’ Science and Technology Committee, denouncing the existing regulatory hurdles that were stalling Internet expansion. In August, ANTEL unilaterally cut the SECIU–Chasque line, fearing it might be used for full Internet access—even though contractual terms expressly forbade it. Letters of solidarity poured in from across the world. The Institute pursued legal action, invoking rights to free expression, access to information, and freedom of assembly (yes, even virtual assemblies). Though the courts dismissed the case, they acknowledged the need for “a broad national debate” on Internet access—a debate catalysed by extensive media coverage. Among the general public, Chasque remained the sole access provider. Prices dropped below $2 per kilosegment when, in February 1994, Chasque began accessing the Internet via URUPAC rather than Brazil.
ANTEL’s Internet policy underwent a sea change under new leadership. By August 1995, Chasque began offering graphical Internet access (SLIP/PPP), allowing users to surf the web and create their own pages. Before long, volume-based pricing was scrapped. Membership—and Internet use in Uruguay more broadly—soared through 1996. The system had to be overhauled and upgraded. A serious crisis struck in December. Yet, against the odds—and even expert predictions (“no system survives a week-long outage,” warned one consultant)—Chasque bounced back. Its recovery owed everything to its community of users and the APC’s global support network, with technicians working around the clock from Montevideo, Bonn, Rio, Mexico City and San Francisco to bring the system back online—this time on a Sun Ultra II. A small “miracle,” perhaps, born of the shared conviction that our work was never merely about connecting machines, but about connecting people.
What followed is no longer history…
Roberto Bissio