Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, July 16, 1995 TAG: 9507170006
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: STEPHEN FOSTER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG LENGTH: Long
For months, BEV, Virginia Tech and the town of Blacksburg have been discussing plans for a privately owned company to operate a modem pool - hardware that allows computers to talk to each other via telephone - for BEV users who don't have a direct tie to the university.
And what that means, for starters, is that a lot of BEV users soon will find themselves paying more money for the time they spend surfing the Internet or e-mailing their friends.
The most oft-mentioned company to take over the service is InfiNet, an 18-month-old business jointly owned by two traditional media companies: Landmark Communications Inc. of Norfolk and Knight-Ridder Inc. of New York. Landmark is parent of The Roanoke Times. InfiNet already provides Internet access to more than 600 users in Roanoke and also operates in the Norfolk and Richmond areas.
"We're talking to [BEV officials]," said Bill Warren, the managing editor of The Roanoke Times. He also is involved with InfiNet's strategic planning. Any agreement, though, won't happen earlier than late summer or early fall.
At stake are about 1,000 BEV subscribers who have no ties to the university - "private" users, as Tech terms them. For now, anyone with a connection to the university will continue using the school's modem pool.
This spring, messages began popping up on the "bev.news" discussion group, with subscribers worrying that a private company might spell the end of the townwide computer network experience. The rumor mill was such that it prompted Andrew Cohill, BEV's director and a lecturer at Tech, to write a message to BEV subscribers.
"The BEV is in no danger of going away. The community character of it may change; only the community itself 'owns' that essential ingredient," Cohill wrote. "No bureaucracy or company can take it away unless the community lets it."
As an experiment, BEV has allowed Tech graduate students to study how computer networking in a community works; it has been introduced into the public school system; researchers are looking to see how businesses can benefit from Internet exposure. Cohill insists that private companies interested in making money from BEV won't change the nature of BEV itself.
The project has worked to create a sort of computer-line community where residents can chat, look up specials at the local grocery store or find out information from the newspaper with a few clicks on their computer's mouse - all, up to now, at an extremely low cost. More than 14,000 townspeople use it now.
It's a given that costs for using BEV will rise once a private company takes over, but Cohill said that fact has to be weighed with the prices of other on-line services in mind.
"I think it's time to do it," Cohill said. "Rates are going to go up, but are they going to be exorbitant? I don't think so."
Currently, BEV subscribers pay $6 to connect their computers to the system and $8.60 a month for unlimited service.
Warren said InfiNet would offer 10 hours of service for $9.95 a month, or 100 hours for $24.95. Additional hours would be $2 per hour. "This will be the offer that we'll be making to the BEV people," he said. "On the high end, we think it's better than what anyone can offer."
In comparison, America Online charges $9.95 a month for five hours of use. CompuServe's basic rate is $9.95 for three hours of use; its extended rate is $24.95 for 10 hours.
Warren said InfiNet - if it strikes a deal - would want BEV to continue to operate as it does today in some capacity and would likely establish a place on InfiNet's Roanoke Times "home page" where computer users could easily tie in to BEV information.
Cohill said InfiNet could probably provide better service than the understaffed BEV operation can now. Warren said the company would offer constant technical assistance by phone, and would upgrade the modems that are used, making information exchange for users quicker. Plus, he said, users would have access to Landmark news stories, whether they be in The Roanoke Times or its sister paper in Norfolk, The Virginian-Pilot.
InfiNet is not the only company interested in BEV, however. Ken Anderson, who sits on the town's telecommunications advisory committee, said there are others, and Judy Lilly, Tech's director of communication services, said stories about BEV on national television and newspapers have gotten plenty of companies interested.
"Companies are wanting to piggy-back on the exposure," she said.
Bell Atlantic, which with Tech and the town established the BEV project, might set up its own modem pool for private users, a company spokesman said. More important, a faster, more efficient - and more expensive - means of hooking into the Internet that Bell Atlantic plans to make available to residential users next year could render the use of modems unnecessary.
The service, called "integrated services digital network" would allow users to use their telephones at same time their computers were hooked into the Internet, spokesman Paul Miller said. "It would be a lot fasterand it wouldn't tie up your phone line" like a modem does.
"My hope is that a local company ... will step into the breach" Anderson said, although he and others wonder if such a company would be financially stable enough to operate a modem pool.
The point is, any private company likely will have some kind of competition eventually.
"Exactly what we hoped would happen is happening," Anderson said. "Communication is becoming a utility."
When Bell Atlantic, Tech and the town of Blacksburg agreed in 1992 to try the project, one of the main services the university provided was access to its modem pool, which students and faculty members have used for years to get on the Internet. At that time, no other entity was willing to take the responsibility.
"People doubted whether this [the BEV project] would work or not," Lilly said. "We were in a research test mode."
Tech has 300 modems that allow computers to interact with each other, Lilly said. It costs several hundred thousand dollars each year to operate a modem pool, and like many things involving computer technology, it becomes obsolete quickly as advances are made, making expensive upgrading necessary.
"The modem pool is a very capital-intensive operation," Cohill said. "It's not cheap."
The $6- and $8.60-fees that BEV subscribers pay go to Tech for use of the pool, but with a full third of the town using BEV the pool is being pushed to capacity, especially so by some who abuse the system by keeping their computers connected to the Tech modem pool 24 hours a day, seven days a week, Lilly said.
On top of that, Tech is looking to cut costs in the face of budget cuts and shortfalls.
And, because it is a state agency, Lilly's department is not permitted to make a profit on the service - a fact which benefits BEV subscribers by keeping costs artificially low.
So Tech is ready to transfer the modem pool responsibility to someone else.
The school has also been talking with InfiNet to see what kind of deal the company might make for its faculty and students, Lilly said. Those discussions aren't of a contractual nature, though. Rather the university is merely interested in seeing what a private company might be able to offer its people. Several years down the line, however, it is conceivable that a private company could take over operation of Tech's entire modem pool, she said.
For now, though, Lilly said whatever company - whether it be InfiNet, Bell Atlantic or some other provider - decides to make a go of it in Blacksburg, Tech will continue to support the BEV project. "Our partnership will still be there and strong," she said.
"The university is not going to just dump the town," Cohill said. "We're going to support it as long as we can and as long as it makes sense to."
However, Lilly said, "our department is not in the business of selling service to someone downtown. It was never our intent to run a modem pool business."
by CNB