Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, January 18, 1992 TAG: 9201180203
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MADELYN ROSENBERG
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG LENGTH: Medium
PLAN WOULD CHANGE FIBER OF BLACKSBURG
This town may be the first in the country to be completely linked, house to house, business to business, by fiber optics.It is a proposal that the creators are calling "The Blacksburg Electronic Village."
"Think of the situations where you'd use a telephone and every dialogue you've ever had on one," said Bob Heterick, the former vice president for Information Systems at Virginia Tech. "The list is essentially endless."
With the information system, he said, the list of what you could do would be even longer.
Japan intends to have a fully fiber-optic telecommunications system by 2015, and American phone companies intend to follow suit.
A dozen or so experiments are already under way in the United States, linking small groups of people.
"But none have addressed an entire community and reached out into the fabric of everyday life," said Heterick, who will continue to work with the project.
Through a system such as this, parents could check their children's homework assignments, which could be listed by the high school. Company executives could do research using a library in California. Local voters could let Town Council know their feelings on local issues.
The lines could be used for the telephone, for computers, for cable television.
Fiber-optic cable transmits information by digitally encoded pulses of light. The technology permits huge increases in the amount of data that can be transmitted in a given amount of time.
Heterick hopes that soon Blacksburg - a place where many people already are technologically literate - will be on the cutting edge of the Information Age.
"Boy, that's big stuff, isn't it?" said Blacksburg Mayor Roger Hedgepeth. "It's not just a new project. It's a very creative thing, and it has infinite possibilities that are connected to the wave of the future."
Monday morning, Tech plans to announce the launching of a feasibility study for this experiment and to discuss how a partnership between the town, Tech and private industry could promote the project.
The cost would likely be shouldered by private industries, C&P, IBM and perhaps the federal government.
Virginia Tech President James McComas did not have a cost estimate Friday afternoon, but more details are expected Monday, when the university releases its report to the community. The idea "is not to make this a burden on the taxpayers," he said.
Compared with other communications media, fiber optics is relatively low in cost for the amount of information that can be received, said Richard Claus, director of Tech's Fiber and Electro-Optics Research Center.
Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Abingdon, would help gain some of the federal money now available for projects such as these. Boucher has sponsored legislation that would spur research on and use of fiber optics by allowing phone companies, such as C&P, to compete with cable television companies.
"No agreements have been signed, and no details have been worked out," McComas said. "But it's an exciting project, you can see."
Blacksburg is ideal because it is compact, Heterick said. Already, a number of groups have been doing research related to fiber optics. And already, computers are everywhere.
"I could start down my street and go to the next six houses, and I'd find at least six computers," Heterick said. "I think the penetration in the town of Blacksburg is as high as anywhere in Virginia, perhaps anywhere in the world."
Tech already has created an on-campus "electronic village" consisting of full voice, data and video services. About 15,000 students have computers, as do 6,000 faculty members, he said.
A fiber-optic network throughout the town should help draw industry, especially more technologically advanced ones, McComas said.
The Electronic Village could shatter the perception of isolation in an area that is considered rural, the release said. "It could provide a major `window to the world,' that currently only large companies and organizations possess."
And, said McComas, "it could make the university community an even more desirable place to live."
Staff writer Cathryn McCue contributed information to this story.