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The International Packet Switched Service (IPSS) was created in 1978 by a collaboration between the United Kingdom's General Post Office, Western Union International, and the United States' Tymnet. This network grew from Europe and the USA to cover Canada, Hong Kong and Australia by 1981, and by the 1990s it provided a worldwide networking infrastructure.

Companies and individual users could connect in to the network, via a PSS (Packet Switch Stream) modem, or an X.25 PAD (Packet Assembler/Disassembler), and a dedicated PSS line, and use it to connect to a variety of online databases and mainframe systems. There was a choice of about three different speeds of PSS lines, although a faster line was more costly to rent.