THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, January 31, 1996 TAG: 9601310387
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DAVE MAYFIELD, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 85 lines
The joke in the telephone industry is that ISDN stands for ``It Still Does Nothing.''
A decade after introducing it, many telephone companies haven't yet figured out how to sell the industry's highly vaunted Integrated Service Digital Network, which crams voice, data and video transmissions on a single phone line.
Lately, however, some phone-service providers have made some serious progress. More and more people are telecommuting - working at home on computers networked into their central offices. Still others are jumping on theglobal Internet computer network for work and fun. In both cases, an increasing percentage of these people are turning to special high-speed ISDN lines to navigate the way.
Bell Atlantic Corp., Virginia's largest local phone company, on Tuesday announced an agreement with Microsoft Corp. that it hopes will further boost its fast-growing ISDN business.
The two companies said they will try to streamline the often-arduous process that customers have to go through to have ISDN lines installed. The two companies will jointly market ISDN services in Bell Atlantic's territory and cooperate to get the right computer software and hardware into customers' homes and businesses.
Bell Atlantic is already the nation's leading provider of ISDN services. Its ISDN lines rose by 48 percent last year, to 145,000.
Through the Microsoft agreement and several earlier steps, ``we've gone out of our way to eliminate the roadblocks to ISDN and make it as friendly as possible to our customers,'' said Curt Koeppen, a Bell Atlantic vice president.
Some question how long the phone company's ISDN offering will be attractive.
At 128 kilobits per second, ISDN-capable equipment lets computers pull in data at about nine times the rate of computers using today's typical analog modems.
``That's a big leap over what you've got now. But if you're pulling down large video files, the picture still paints pretty slowly at 128K,'' said Dana Coltrin, who oversees Cox Communications Inc.'s development of data and phone services in Hampton Roads.
Coltrin pointed out that cable-TV providers are developing modems that within the next several years promise to let subscribers receive data and video transmissions over the Internet at rates dozens or even hundreds of times faster. ``In the long run, I think cable is going to have a more versatile and higher-speed product,'' he said.
Bell Atlantic's Koeppen said he recognizes the threat. But he said that for cable providers, getting into the data business is easier said than done. In the meantime, he's focusing on making it easier for customers to buy and use ISDN.
Bell Atlantic and other phone companies have traditionally been slow at responding to customer orders for the service - often taking weeks to install it and then poorly explaining how to make it work.
To help solve that problem for residential users, Koeppen said Bell Atlantic has set up a Norfolk-based center called InfoSpeed to act as a one-stop ISDN clearinghouse. Customers who call the center can not only order the service, but also purchase the equipment needed to modify their computers. It ranges in price from $275 to $395.
Bell Atlantic also introduced a residential ISDN tariff. After one-time connection charges totaling $173, home customers pay a monthly fee of $30, plus a usage fee of 1 to 4 cents a minute, depending upon the time of day and whether both of the phone line's data channels are used. Unlike some other phone companies, Bell Atlantic doesn't offer an ISDN service that gives customers unlimited usage for a flat monthly rate.
Other phone companies, including GTE Corp., offer ISDN services in Virginia. But Koeppen said Bell Atlantic's is the most ubiquitous - available to about 95 percent of its residential customers.
One key limitation for ISDN: Most commercial Internet access providers aren't yet configured to allow their subscribers to receive data at ISDN speed.
Norfolk-based InfiNet, the largest Hampton Roads-based provider, has been testing ISDN and may soon incorporate it, said Tom Manos, president of InfiNet's network services unit.
``If you read the trades, the general thinking is that ISDN is too little too late with cable modems coming along,'' Manos said. ``I'm not so sure. I think there's life left in ISDN.'' by CNB