Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, May 25, 1993 TAG: 9305250554
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: Greg Edwards
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The information superhighway - a concept whose most visible supporter has been Vice President Al Gore - would provide a high-speed route for the transmission of voice, video and computer data to every home and office in the United States.
It is literally the interstate system for the information age.
Boucher, chairman of the House Science Subcommittee, argues that such a system is critical to the country's economic future.
Much of the structure of this network is already in place. Telephone companies already have connected American cities with fiber-optic cables able to transmit incredible amounts of information in seconds.
What remains to be built are the access roads to individual homes and offices from these main routes. The copper wires that phone companies already have in place are only of limited value in allowing the superhighway to realize its full potential. The copper needs to be replaced with glass optical fiber.
This is where Boucher enters the picture: He is sponsoring two bills in the House of Representatives designed to spur private enterprise to complete construction of these fiber "off ramps" of the superhighway.
One bill would allow phone companies to sell other information services such as cable television. The income from these services should encourage the phone companies to build the remaining - but most expensive - links of a national fiber network, Boucher has said.
Another bill that the congressman introduced last month would provide federal research and development funds to design the high-speed switches and equipment to control and route traffic on the highway. It also would ensure access to the network for educational institutions and local governments and set standards so everyone operates by the same rules of the road.
Ten years ago, I helped with a research project in Columbus, Ohio, to find out if people would pay to receive interactive services through their television sets, such as home shopping, banking, reference libraries, and sports, news and weather.
Most consumers said they would if the cost was not too high.
The more educated and prosperous were more likely to be interested. Some corporations, notably big newspaper companies, have experimented with offering these services but with little success.
Now, this information network may be closer than many of us realize.
Already thousands of personal-computer users, from research scientists to grade-school kids, are interconnected on computer bulletin boards, which offer a variety of services in addition to exchanging messages. More and more people will use these services as technology makes them easier to navigate and mass-marketing makes the equipment cheaper.
If 10 years from now we are browsing the stacks of the Library of Congress from our living rooms, if we are looking at our grandchildren smiling at us as we talk over the telephone, or if we owe our lives to the diagnosis of our X-rays by a specialist hundreds of miles away, Rick Boucher may be one of many people we have to thank.
Greg Edwards is a reporter in the Roanoke Times & World-News' New River Valley bureau.
by CNB