 | |
| Industry | Telecommunications |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1984 in Cupertino, California[1] |
| Founder | Paul Baran |
| Defunct | 1998 |
| Fate | Acquired by Digi International |
| Headquarters | , United States  |
| Products | TrailBlazer |
Telebit Corporation was a US-based modem manufacturer, known for their TrailBlazer series of high-speed modems. One of the first modems to routinely exceed 9600 bit/s speeds, the TrailBlazer used a proprietary modulation scheme that proved highly resilient to interference, earning the product an almost legendary reputation for reliability despite mediocre (or worse) line quality. They were particularly common in Unix installations in the 1980s and 1990s.
The high price of the Telebit modems was initially not a concern as their performance was equally high compared to other systems. However, as new designs using V.32 and V.32bis began to arrive in the early 1990s, Telebit's price/performance ratio was seriously eroded. A series of new designs followed, but these never regained their performance lead. By the mid-1990s the company had been part of a series of mergers and eventually disappeared in 1998 after being acquired by Digi International.