THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, November 10, 1995 TAG: 9511100443
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DAVE MAYFIELD, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 119 lines
For decades, good schools, highways and water systems have topped the infrastructure wish list of business leaders in cites and towns across the country.
But on Thursday at a state-sponsored summit at Old Dominion University, Virginia Secretary of Commerce and Trade Robert T. Skunda said another essential has been added to that list: advanced telecommunications networks.
``That is as important now as roads have been to economic development in the last century,'' Skunda said.
As he addressed the more than 100 local business leaders gathered at Thursday's ``technology summit,'' the commerce secretary was largely preaching to the choir.
At one point, when a speaker asked for a show of hands by people who regularly use the global Internet computer network, nearly every one signaled.
It was the third of four such telecommunications summits sponsored by Skunda, the Virginia Technology Council and the Center for Innovative Technology. The first two were in Fairfax and Danville last month. Another is planned Nov. 21 at Wytheville.
Organizers said Hampton Roads participants were the most technologically inclined they've run across so far. But they were also inclined to complain about state and local government laws, regulations and tax policies that they claim are threatening to stymie information-technology development.
Skunda welcomed the complaints.
As one Peninsula businessman carped about Hampton's tax and zoning policies, saying they prevented him from writing down the value of his computers quickly enough and scotched his plan for letting employees ``telecommute'' from their homes, the commerce secretary nodded approvingly.
``I don't think we really understand all of the roadblocks and impediments that are facing telecommunications providers and the businesses that use their services,'' Skunda said later in an interview. ``The regulatory environment is still typically dealing with the way business was conducted decades ago.''
Skunda said one of his main goals for the summits has been to identify legislative reforms to present to the General Assembly in January. He declined, however, to reveal any specific changes on telecommunications that the Allen administration will ask for from the legislature in the next session.
The thing that summit participants agreed upon most enthusiastically was that the increasingly rapid pace of technology change has overwhelmed their ability to understand it.
Among the speakers was Thomas Manos, president of network services for InfiNet Co., a Norfolk-based Internet services company. When Manos threw up a slide indicating he'd make a five-year forecast for trends in his industry, he quickly retreated. ``That was from a presentation last year,'' Manos explained. Now, he feels comfortable projecting only six months out, he added to the chuckling crowd.
Anne Raymond-Savage, who oversees ODU's electronic distance-learning network as associate vice president for academic affairs, added that the computer industry she relies upon is so competitive and quick-changing, ``I feel like a log in the rapids. I don't know where I'm going to get my head banged.''
Raymond-Savage said ODU is plunging forward nevertheless in ``tele-learning.'' The university, in partnership with 16 community colleges, already has about 3,000 students enrolled in the satellite-delivered courses of its Teletechnet unit. In the next two years, she said, the number will grow with the planned addition of six more community colleges and the expansion of courses sent directly to employers.
Ford Motor Co.'s Norfolk Assembly Plant and Langley Air Force Base in Hampton are tentatively scheduled to add on-site connections to Teletechnet in January.
ODU, Virginia Tech and several community colleges also plan next year to begin piloting the use of an advanced telecommunications switching network that will let distance-learning students at desktop computers in their homes or work places interact with each other electronically.
Eventually, the schools want to store many course lectures in electronic ``servers'' that can be called up by students whenever they want.
Norman Neal Jr., general manager of Eastern Virginia operations for Bell Atlantic Corp., said his company plans to use every possible electronic medium to deliver services to its customers.
Bell Atlantic has asked the State Corporation Commission, for instance, to approve a tariff for residential customers for a service called Integrated Services Digital Network. ISDN essentially will double the speed at which home computer users can retrieve data over the Internet. And the data pipeline will grow ever wider, Neal said.
Bell Atlantic still wants to use its fiber-optic network for its much-ballyhooed plan to deliver TV, videos-on-demand and a host of interactive services to phone customers, he added, but has been forced to slow down.
``We're in a struggle now to get the technology at a price point that you can afford it,'' he said.
In the meantime, Neal said Bell Atlantic is fast developing an interim solution that will at least get it into the cable-TV business. By mid-1996, he said, it plans to offer more than 100 channels in Hampton Roads via a microwave system in which it recently purchased a large minority stake. This so-called ``wireless cable'' will be marketed under the Bell Atlantic brand name, he noted.
State government leaders want to make wider use of the information technologies that are available, said Hud Croasdale, director of the Virginia Council on Information Management.
Proclaiming himself the ``techno-geek of the state,'' Croasdale said state agencies are pursuing future telecommunications initiatives ranging from the electronic renewal of driver's licenses to transmitting video over communications networks to help physicians diagnose routine ailments of prison inmates.
New information technologies promise to make state government more accessible and cut the costs of delivering services, Croasdale said. Both should help Virginia stay competitive in the race for business investment and jobs, he said. ILLUSTRATION: MOTOYA NAKAMURA
The Virginian-Pilot
"I don't think we really understand all of the roadblocks and
impediments that are facing telecommunications providers and the
businesses that use their services," say Virginia Secretary of
Commerce and Trade Robert T. Skunda.
by CNB