Telephony Software Associates, Inc. (TSA) was chartered in 1992 to support the TBOS Tester user community. TBOS Tester is a package of software and hardware that enables TBOS serial e-telemetry to be generated, monitored and decoded by a personal computer. Engineers at LICOM, Inc. of Herndon, VA developed the original TBOS Tester in 1987.
Several hundred TBOS Testers had been deployed by the time the telecommunications division of LICOM was acquired in 1989 by Infotron Systems Corporation of Cherry Hill, NJ. TBOS Tester continued to be sold, supported and enhanced somewhat by engineers at the Herndon subsidiary. Infotron was itself acquired by Gandalf Systems Corporation of Ottawa in 1991, and the Herndon division liquidated in 1992..
TSA's founders (former LICOM employees) recognized that although TBOS Tester was a valuable tool for owners of telecommunications equipment, as a niche product it would most likely become unsupported by a large company focused on other markets (data communications products for private networks). The founders (and Gandalf management) perceived the TBOS Tester user community to be in jeopardy of being disowned, and a proven useful product becoming no longer available before its time..
The rights to TBOS Tester were thus acquired from Gandalf in an exchange that included TSA's commitment to ongoing support of existing TBOS Tester owners. In the ensuing years TSA has added many dozens of features and capabilities to TBOS Tester, and has seen its user community grow by hundreds more.
As a legacy protocol, TBOS usage is in decline as newer technologies and monitoring methods are developed and deployed. It has become increasingly more difficult to find quantitative information about the protocol itself or assistance in dealing with TBOS-related problems that might arise. Accordingly, in late 1998 TSA established the internet domain TBOS.net to address this ongoing need.
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4701 Willowtree Lane
Clayton, NC 27520
United States of America
(919) 553-TBOS [553-8267]
fax: (919) 553-9095
tsa@tbos.net
This page last updated 11 December, 1998.