Telenet was the first FCC-licensed public data network in the United States. Telenet was incorporated in 1973 and started operations in 1975. It was founded by Bolt Beranek & Newman with Larry Roberts as CEO as a means of making packet switching technology public. He had tried to interest AT&T in buying the technology, but the monopoly's reaction was that this was incompatible with their future. It initially used ARPANET technology but changed the host interface to X.25 and the terminal interface to X.29. It went public in 1979 and was then sold to GTE.