This existed in the early 1990's though with leased video lines and fax machines for paper since Email was still in its infancy.
It was awful, but for technical and bureaucratic reasons.

"If I had a dollar for every girl that didn't like me, pretty soon girls would like me."

I was a kid in a north suburb of London when these premiered in the UK - they were the absolute coolest thing on earth (along with the Vickers VC-10 jet). Star Wars is just a pale shadow of the cool factor of spaceships made out of detergent bottles and actors (literally) on strings. It didn't matter - we were a rapt audience of six year olds.

Ethanol vapor creates quite a loud noise when it combusts in a closed space, and quite a flame front in general...this should get interesting.