ROANOKE TIMES 
                      Copyright (c) 1995, Roanoke Times

DATE: Saturday, December 2, 1995             TAG: 9512040021
SECTION: BUSINESS                 PAGE: A-6  EDITION: METRO 
DATELINE: TEMPE, ARIZ.  
SOURCE: BETH SILVER ASSOCIATED PRESS 

FAST DATA VIA TV SPACE

THAT BLACK BAR that bugs you when the picture won't hold still may soon carry lots of information.

Data broadcasting, used for more than a decade to provide closed captioning to TVs for the hearing-impaired, may soon deliver far more information and software to consumers.

A group of 13 companies led by computer chip manufacturer Intel Corp. and NBC earlier announced plans for Internet and other data to be available by next summer.

But a Tempe company, WavePhore Inc., has been experimenting with the concept since 1991 and has forged alliances in Mexico and Canada that may also become significant.

The Intel-NBC group plans to send data in a portion of the television signal called the ``vertical blanking interval''-the black bar that's visible when a TV picture starts to roll.

WavePhore, meanwhile, will use the blanking interval and the active part of the TV signal, potentially allowing it to send more data at once. The company hasn't received federal regulatory permission to go ahead, although it is conducting some experiments in Arizona.

Consumers would need a $300 decoder to separate the data from the broadcast signal and use it with a personal computer.

``Our footprint is really virtually every place in the world because every place in the world there's some kind of signal,'' said David Deeds, chief executive officer. ``Since we're piggybacking on an existing infrastructure, we don't have to wait for the five to 10 years for it to be built.'

Information is transmitted by broadcasters through a device the size of a videocassette recorder. The encoder reads the information and inserts it into the broadcast signal.

In national laboratory testing last year, WavePhore failed to get the information across without broadcast interference, said Rick Lehtinen, a senior analyst with the multimedia group In-Stat, based in Scottsdale, Ariz.

Since then, WavePhore made some changes to the product and is ready for another round of testing

``Everyone who requires data to be delivered to them on a continuous streaming basis could be a candidate for using this type of technology,'' Lehtinen said. ``It represents potentially a whole lot of business.''

Datacasting can be used with satellite, cable and microwave systems in addition to standard television signals.

LENGTH: Medium:   55 lines
ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO:  AP.  David Deeds of WavePhore says this board will 
          provide fast data communication for computers using available 
          television signals.