As the former assignee of fidonet 1:101/435 I remember quite well the controversies which in conjunction of the general availability of public Internet access led to the virtual death of FidoNet in the USA.
Namely when EchoMail got going which in turn led to many BBSes hooking up to FidoNet, most of the actual telecom cost was picked up by those with "deep pockets" or low/no cost access to the long distance phone system.
With the severe economic contraction in the late 80s, many of these "Sugar Daddies" simply couldn't do it any more.
Thus various Cost Recovery schemes came into being. Satellite Echomail distribution was seen as more cost effective alternative to dial up - I recall many Regional Echomail hubs spending over $200 a month in long distance charges, even with 14.4 kbps (the fastest you could go over dialup back then.
However satellite involves some fairly substantial up-front costs for a dish and a receiver, plus a dialup back channel to feed echomail replies back to the network.
In my neck of the woods there were two factions who wanted to be the only source for echomail -- the conflict this caused caused the whole Fidonet around Metro Boston to quickly implode; many SYSOPS didn't want to have to take sides in this.
I'm sure this situation occured in many other places too.
[ re: datacasting]I think some sticky points of datacasting is what the owners of the TV and radio stations consider is the value of their bandwidth coupled with the lack of technical standards needed to make receivers inexpensive enough that they could become standard equipment for all PCs.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Herb Oxley From: address IS Valid.