
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, January 22, 1995                   TAG: 9501280002
SECTION: ECONOMY                    PAGE: NRV-16   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

ONE-FOURTH OF BLACKSBURG NOW ON-LINE WITH BEV

The Electronic Village enters 1995 with one-fourth of Blacksburg's 36,000 residents and one-fifth of its businesses on line.

More than 1,000 homes, five apartment complexes and 60 businesses are linked to the unique network, as are Virginia Tech, the public schools, the public library and the town government. Many users have an Ethernet connection that allows information to travel to and from the personal computer about 100 times faster than dialing in on telephone lines.

All are linked directly to the Internet, a worldwide link of various computer networks, databases and electronic mail.

The project directors hope that when a large percentage of residents and businesses begin using the information services regularly, the computer link will be viewed as a necessity, like the telephone, rather than a luxury.

One goal of the community computer network is to demonstrate what kind of information services people would like to receive, what they would pay and how they want it delivered. Officials will then teach how to package, market and price services.

Bell Atlantic President Hugh Stallard, whose company has invested more than $6 million in the project, calls Blacksburg a "test bed for the electronic age.''

Blacksburg attracted federal grants and corporate sponsors because it is compact and more than 50 percent of its residents have personal computers.

A pilot project in a section of a large city wouldn't have worked as well, designers said, because people's daily routines naturally spread out throughout the wider metropolitan area.

Also, Virginia Tech was one of the first universities in the nation to rig its campus with fiber-optic cables, which allow information to travel faster and in much greater volume than do standard telephone lines. About 8,300 of Blacksburg's residents live on the campus.

Bell Atlantic has laid another 42 miles of fiber-optic cable and installed a digital electronic switching center, which allows voice, data and full-motion video to pass simultaneously over the same lines.

by CNB