BBS in a Box 2/BBS in a box - Trilogy II.iso/Files/MUG News/EFF/what.isdn.txt

Text File | 1992-08-03 | 11.5 KB | 185 lines | [TEXT/EDIT]

Telephone Service That Rings of the Future
By Joshua Quittner. STAFF WRITER Newsday
(Copyright 1992 by Newsday,Inc. Reprinted and posted by permission)

     TO JOHN PERRY BARLOW, a point man for the computer culture, it's the next
step in the "Great Work. The physical wiring of collective human consciousness
_ the idea of connecting every mind to every other mind in fullduplex
broadband."
     To Ohio Bell, it's a way for customers to have up to nine telephone
numbers _ some for specific friends, some for the bill collectors _ for the
price of one.
    This technological Rorschach test is called Integrated Services Digital
Network. And not since the invention of television have so many people looked
at one thing and interpreted it in so many different ways.
    Technically, ISDN refers to an architecture _ the software, hardware and
protocols needed to deliver a mix of voice, video and data over a digital
telephone network. This is important because it is a way of squeezing every
bit of capacity out of the twisted pair of copper wires that the local
telephone company runs into your house, bringing the kind of services that are
usually associated with more expensive fiber optic cables.
     When Barbara Bush videoconferenced from the White House with children
at a Baltimore hospital at Christmas, she was using an ISDN connection. When
a group of Lawrence Livermore Laboratory scientists work at home, ISDN
enables them to use their personal computers, without a modem, to tap into
the lab network and get a data connection 27 times faster than normal. The
Rochester Telephone Co. and AT&T recently completed an ISDN experiment in
which phone company employees used ISDN to telecommute from their homes.
    With the lifting of restrictions that barred local telephone companies
from providing information services, the Baby Bells are looking for ways of
getting into the information business. Fiber optic cable, the hair-thin
strands of glass that convey signals at the speed of light, is considered
the ultimate way to transmit information services, both for its speed and
high capacity. But the cost of deploying fiber has stalled it at curbside;
telephone companies estimate it will cost hundreds of billions of dollars
to extend it into homes.
    By using the existing copper wires that connect homes to local telephone
companies, ISDN could be a far cheaper, more quickly available alternative, a
"ramping up technology," to fiber, said Barlow. With software developer
Mitchell Kapor, who is famous for the business spreadsheet program Lotus 1-2-3,
Barlow founded the Cambridge, Mass.-based Electronic Frontier Foundation, a
public interest group dedicated to defining and promoting the rights of
computer users. The organization is lobbying for ISDN as the medium
for an easy-to-access, national public network of computer users.
    Will ISDN stay where it is, mostly with businesses, or will it make the
connection to people's homes? The answer depends on whom you ask.
    "I think we're at a critical period in the deployment of ISDN because
up until now, it has not been possible to make an ISDN telephone call from
the service area of one phone company to another," said Marvin Sirbu, a
telecommunications expert and professor at Carnegie Mellon University in
Pittsburgh. Sirbu said that ISDN gained momentum recently with industrywide
agreements that created standards for equipment makers and service providers
to interconnect nationally. That should occur by the end of 1992. It means
that the 300 or so isolated ISDN islands will be able to talk to each other
and the technology is almost certain to proliferate, at least between
businesses, he said.
     BUT SIRBU discounted the EFF's notion of a public national network
based on ISDN and said it was wrong to expect the telephone companies to
deploy it for information services.
    "I have followed the trials and tribulations of home information services
for more than 10 years," he said. "Everybody keeps saying when the
technology gets cheaper it will be a big success or when the technology gets
better it will be a big success. But I haven't seen any applications that
would make this a big success in the home. The issues here are marketing
issues and finding out what the right product is that someone wants at home."
     Commercial interest in ISDN seemed to peak in 1986, when McDonald's Corp.
was the first business to try it out. (Two executives, two miles apart, spoke
on the phone while looking at video images of each other and while
transmitting a graphic of the Golden Arches onto their computer screens.)
Though the technology spread to the rest of corporate and high-tech
America, it did so slowly; uses were pretty much limited to a kind of
advanced Caller ID option.
    For instance, if you call your credit card company's 800 number from
home, chances are your name and records will pop up automatically _ before
you even identify yourself _ on the computer screen of the customer service
rep as he takes your call. With ISDN, a company can also tell if you called,
were put on hold and hung up without ever speaking to a person; if they
want to, they can call you back. It also allows them to note in their
database that you speak only Spanish and automatically route you to a
bilingual operator.
    The anticipated _ and current uses _ for ISDN run from the poetic to
the prosaic.
    On the poetic end of the spectrum is the Electronic Frontier, which is
pushing ISDN as the ideal platform for what has been dubbed the National
Public Network. Barlow said that that network would carry, in addition to
normal telephone calls, multimedia electronic mail, in which users could
send a mixture of voice and video; personal faxes, software, games "and other
media not yet imagined." The network, in his view, would be the ultimate
expression of "global free speech," giving all users an unprecedented chance
to interact.
    "We believe that ISDN, whatever its limitations, is rapid enough to jump
start the greatest free market the world has ever known," said Barlow.
    ISDN can deliver data 27 times faster than a 2400-baud modem, the
telephone-computer interface that most PC users use. It does this digitally,
by creating two 64-kilobit-a-second channels that can be used for voice or
data, and one 16-kilobit-a-second channel, on your phone line. With developing
data- compression techniques, users could get a combination of voice,
pictures, music and video. "Multimedia postcards," as Kapor put it.
"Today, it's the case that you can do very high-quality picture phones over
ISDN at very, very good quality," he said. "Compression techniques are
continuing to evolve so it's reasonable to expect that we will have VHS-level
quality" over copper wires.
    But, while more than 60 percent of the country will be ISDN-ready within
two years, Kapor, Barlow and others worry that the telephone companies will
do little with it for residential users, aside from offering their business
customers _ where most of the money is for phone companies _ some ISDN services.
     "Telco mindset was developed in an era of highly centralized networks in
which it took a decade of court battles to give you the right to attach a
suction cup to your telephone," said Kapor. "Computer industry mindset,
especially PCs, was born in garages and attics where teenagers, kids, and
outsiders invented the Apple II and Lotus 1-2-3." So Kapor and the EFF has
been trying to line up the support of computer and software manufacturers,
among others, to lobby in Congress and among the public utility commissions
state by state, for a more directed and speedy deployment of ISDN.
    Currently, there are some 300 ISDN "islands," each centered around
discrete ISDN-equipped phone switches. No one knows exactly how many there
are, nor how many users they serve, though the vast majority are dedicated
telephone lines that run from telephone company switches to specific businesses.
     Though users within each island can interact using ISDN, they can not
interact between islands because the companies that manufacture ISDN switches
used different standards, and because there was no standard interface between
the ISDN that a local telephone company uses, and the ISDN that a
long-distance carrier uses.
    However, standards by Bellcore, the research arm of the Baby Bells,
should bring all the switches into conformity by the fall of 1992.
    Stan Kluz, an ISDN expert at Lawrence Livermore, recently hooked the
first group of ISDN users off site, into the laboratory's computer network.
Kluz said that through this arrangement, 12 scientists who live near the
University of California at Berkeley can use their computers at home, and have
access to data at 64 kilobits a second.
    With speeds that fast, the scientists can manipulate huge amounts of
data and see their problems displayed in three dimensional graphics on their
home computers.
     Kluz sees the future of telecommunications and it is ISDN. He says that
videoconferencing on all ISDN-equipped computers at Lawrence Livermore will
be available soon; with nationwide interconnection agreements, he hopes to
see "distance learning" in which a class in, say, nuclear physics, could be
videoconferenced at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to the computer
of a Lawrence Livermore scientist, who can take part in the class. But Kluz,
who also serves as president of the California ISDN Users Group, echoed Kapor
and said that the phone companies aren't moving fast enough to create demand
for the service.
"They're not marketing it well," he said.
     NYNEX spokesman Joe Gagen _ as well as virtually everyone else
interviewed for this story _ said residential ISDN is a classic chicken and
egg problem. In order for people to want it, there have to be services. But
information service providers won't proliferate until there's a
demand. Gagen said that residential demand will grow as people become exposed
to ISDN at work.
    "It's not going to happen overnight," said Colin Beasley, staff director
of network planning at NYNEX. "My guess is that from an affordability and
deployment point of view, you're probably talking about 1994-1995 before
you'll see broad penetration into the [New York] residence market."
    ****

    Telephone Service That Rings of the Future

ISDN has already penetrated New Albany, Ohio, where 16 ISDN-accessible homes
have been built. The country-club-style development (median house price,
$700,000) surrounds a Jack Nicklausdesigned golf course and, its
developers say, is the first commercial application of residential ISDN.
     Neil Toeppe of Ohio Bell Telephone Co. said homeowners have the option
of giving out up to nine telephone numbers from an existing telephone line,
each with a different function. For instance, the number listed in a phone
book could be programmed to run into an answering machine; a second line can
be given out to friends, and ring only on telephones in designated
rooms; a third number could be for the children's phone and it could divert
to voice mail after 7:30 p.m.
    Within a year or so, residents will be able to have the local utility
company monitor their thermostats, using the 16 kilobit data channel. That
will let homeowners subscribe to a kind of power sharing agreement under
which the power company will virtually control the thermostat in exchange
for discounted rates. Other features will also be available _ as soon as
someone figures out what they are.
    ****
    --
    josh quittner
    voice: 1.800.544.5410 (2806 at tone)
    [e-mail]