NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #27/NN_1992_27.iso/spool/oh/cast/292

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CAST expects role in developing U.N. Infoport

The Center for Advanced Study in Telecommunications expects to contribute
during this coming year to efforts to define and develop ColumbusU new role as
a United Nations Infoport.

In August, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development invited
Columbus to serve as a RTrade PointS or RInfoportS in a new program that is
part of the U.N.Us Trade Efficiency Initiative. The Trade Efficiency Initiative
is seeking to increase international trade through the use of information and
communication technologies.  In its role as one of 15 U.N. Infoports, Columbus
will act as a center for the development and testing of concepts and
information technologies with trade applications. The city also will serve as a
node in an international electronic data exchange network for clearing ideas
and information on international trade.

CAST Co-director Jane Fraser has been asked by Mayor Gregory S. LashutkaUs
office to serve on the citywide task force that will develop the plan for
ColumbusU participation in the trade initiative. Fraser said she thinks the
Infoport designation is an exciting opportunity for Columbus to lead in the
application of information technology to trade efficiency and development. She
hopes that CAST will be able to help by
serving as a forum for education and for the generation and discussion of
projects that might be part of the Infoport.

Lashutka also sees this as an opportunity for Columbus. ROur early
participation will allow Columbus to emerge as an important gateway to the
world, capitalizing on our inherent strategic advantages as an international
inland port and our existing role as an Rinfoport,S Lashutka said in a press
release.

Jonathan York,  president of the Columbus Area Chamber of Commerce, believes
Columbus is well prepared for its new role.
 ROur communityUs potential to contribute to the Trade Efficiency Initiative is
enormous,S he said in a statement released by his office.

RThe chance to serve as the exclusive North American site will allow Columbus
to serve as a model for public-private sector trade growth,S agreed Jeff Ritter
in  a release. Ritter,  counsel at Vorys, Sater, Seymour & Pease, is a CAST
associate and has been a central player in the efforts to win the U.N. Infoport
designation for Columbus.

The RTrade Point CenterS program is a two-year pilot effort to explore new ways
to conduct international business.  Infoports are being chosen to include
different types of economic environments, with each site having considerable
latitude in selecting and developing the information technologies it will apply
to international trade. Among those information technologies expected to be
used are such things as videoconferencing, databases, bulletin boards and
Electronic Data Interchange (EDI).

In addition, Infoports will be expected to expand their trade-based research in
other ways, including the development and testing of new technology-based trade
procedures, the evaluation of information and communication technology
facilities, and the development of accessible information bases for use by
corporations and members of the public interested in trade issues.

Although the United Nations will eventually select 15 cities to serve as
Infoports for its Trade Efficiency Initiative, to date, only
Columbus and Cartagena, Columbia, have received the designation. Columbus will
be the only city in North America serving as a U.N. Infoport.

Ultimately, the goal of the U.N. Trade Point Centers is to boost
international trade by helping exporters find new markets and by
giving businesses easy access to the information they need. Some experts
believe that application of information technologies to trade processes may
also help lower the costs of import/export transactions, and create new
businesses.

UNCTAD plans to use three principles to guide its Trade Efficiency  Initiative:
imagination, communication, and cooperation. Different participants in
international trade, such as ministers of trade, universities, and experts in
trade efficiency research, will be linked in electronic networks, while leading
private and public trade operators as well as the most advanced companies in
information and communications technology will be linked in associations.
Small- and medium-sized enterprises also will be involved.  And UNCTAD will
seek to stimulate creative proposals by involving the traders of tomorrow:
students and junior executives. The culmination of all of these efforts will be
an international symposium on trade efficiency, to be held in 1994.

               * * * * *

Amsterdam project launched with international summit

Steve Acker
The Ohio State University and the University of Amsterdam launched a two-year
international research project last summer, with a visit by a delegation of OSU
faculty, graduate students and staff to the Netherlands. The trip laid the
foundation for an extended effort towards developing frameworks for
international cooperation and decision making through use of new communication
technologies.

The project, which is being billed as an academic joint venture between the two
universities, will study telecommunications and travel in a distributed work
environment. Incorporated in the project will be an analysis of technological
support systems for group decision making.

That research, however, will be conducted around the framework of a second
research project, a two-year effort by faculty and graduate students at both
universities to jointly analyze and compare telecommunications policies in
Europe and the United States. The policy analysis will center around the
rapidly changing business and communication market in Europe that has resulted
from efforts to complete the European Common Market.

The policy studies will be conducted long distance through the use of Internet,
audio and video conferencing and a computer-based support system for group
decision making, which includes an electronic document exchange subsystem. The
use of those technologies in this international joint venture opens
opportunities for faculty researchers to also study the social and technical
issues of conducting work among geographically/culturally distributed partners,
as well as ways of developing a group decision support system.

In particular, project directors hope to develop a system that meets, first,
the technical requirement of sharing data and programs across public
telecommunications networks and, secondly, the conceptual requirement of being
useful in making decisions by participants separated by distance and culture.

The focus on group decision making in this study questions the standard
approaches to designing group decision support systems, which assume that group
decision making is a rational process that marshals pro and con Rfacts.S
Anonymity of contributions often is favored in these designs to promote more
democratic decision processes and to encourage a large number of ideas to be
submitted for group deliberation.

 In contrast to these standard approaches, the system being designed for this
project emphasizes that decisions emerge from participation in multiple
communication environments, such as private and small group communication,
public press and television, informal RbarS talk, and formal RbusinessS
meetings. In some of these communication environments, information may have
enough social agreement to be called Rfacts,S but at least as many of the
influential features of decision making occur in environments dominated by
human relationships and the expected interpretation of the decision by outside
audiences.

These assumptions have led the project designers to model multiple channels of
communication to support the University of Amsterdam-Ohio State University
collaborators, and to allow them to select from among those channels in seeking
group decisions.

Also key to the final results of the project will be an investigation of how
available bandwidth influences the cost/benefits of audio conferences and video
conferences. Investigators expect to find that familiarity among participants
will allow them to use video conferences carried at fractional T-1 rates (two
56 kb/s channels) along with the more Rnegotiation-appropriateS higher bit
rates. As audio conference costs continue to fall, project designers also feel
it worthwhile to assess the improved intelligibility and reduced fatigue
associated with 7kHz stereo audio relative to 3.4kHz monophonic audio.
International participants with different culturally determined pronunciation
and sentence structure may particularly benefit from this enhanced audio.

The three-week trip to Amsterdam by the OSU team this past summer laid the
groundwork for all this. First, it allowed research teams to be formed with
Dutch students. Secondly, it launched work on the comparative policy aspects of
the study through interviews with European policy makers. Finally, participants
were able to develop the interpersonal trust essential for collaborative
intellectual work.

In addition to the telecommunications aspects of the project, academics on both
sides of the Atlantic see this type of cooperative effort as a way of
increasing international alliances between universities. Pressures within the
academic community to expand the market for universitiesU educational products
and to increase the social and cultural diversity of faculty and student bodies
are working to encourage the development of such international academic Rjoint
ventures.S This project is designed to test the possibilities for applying
advanced information and communication technologies towards the creation of
international classrooms and towards helping research teams overcome the bounds
of time and space.

The Dutch team of faculty, staff and graduate students will visit Ohio State
next summer, arriving June 20th and departing July 11th. Eventually, developers
of the project hope to include a university partner from the Pacific Rim. The
goal will be to extend the comparative nature of the policy investigations and
to increase the awareness of the cultural parameters of group decision support
systems. This expansion is premised on the benefit of Rtriangulated viewpoint,S
in which a third perspective helps all involved parties avoid polarization and
paralysis in decision making.

This research into telecommunications-supported international collaboration has
received ongoing support from the Ameritech Foundation.

               * * * * *

Letter from the Directors: Center fortifying research, clearinghouse missions

From the Directors:

This is the start of a new year at CAST, our fifth as a multidisciplinary
center at The Ohio State University. During our formative years we have seen
numerous changes within
telecommunications industries and the telecommunications environment.

Our central mission at CAST is to facilitate the exchange, processing and
transformation of information about telecommunications.  Our root metaphors
are: scanner, clearinghouse and yeast. CAST and its associates scan the
telecommunications environment for new issues and ideas; CAST is a place where
information is exchanged and contacts are made; and CAST events lead to energy
among the participants -- growth in ideas, processes and projects. CAST
performs this mission for telecommunications researchers and professionals
around the world -- those here within the ranks of Ohio State University
faculty and graduate students, as well as those at other universities and
within government and industry.

Several areas of strength have evolved at CAST as we attempt to provide
leadership in the transformation process of advanced study in
telecommunications. Our research foci are the problems of teaching, learning
and doing research in the age of communicating at a distance. CAST is both a
process and a product center, concerned about the processes of engaging in
telecommunications activities as well as in producing the research products and
laboratories that will enrich the transformation of telecommunications. To this
end, several satellites of research activities have emerged including distance
working and learning; the transformation of current telecommunications
industries and businesses; the use of telecommunications by small- and
medium-sized businesses; consumer uses, needs and applications of
telecommunications services; telecommunications applications in health care;
and public policy issues related to privacy, security, standards-setting and
the international implications of these issues.

Because new information on telecommunications is being generated at a high
rate, scholars and practitioners need help in accessing, categorizing, sifting,
winnowing and storing information and opinion. Your continued support and
dedication to our efforts is critical to helping CAST scan the
telecommunications environment, perform our clearing house function and find
ways to provide yeast for ideas and issues of importance to our collective
future.

Without such support our mission would be impossible. It gives us pleasure to
be able to thank the many individuals and organizations who have contributed to
CASTUs work in recent months. In particular, we need to express our
appreciation to Roy Koenigsknecht, dean of the Graduate School, for his
continued guidance to the CAST directors. The generous support of the Ohio Bell
Foundation, Ameritech Foundation, and Cellular One has funded CAST programs.
James Bracken of the OSU Libraries has developed one of the finest
telecommunications libraries in the country for The Ohio State University. We
also would like to thank Rohan Samarajiva for arranging for the visit of
William H. Melody and Harry M. Trebing to OSU. Melody, who is founding director
of the Centre for International Research on Communication and Information
Technologies (CIRCIT) in Melbourne, Australia, and Trebing, who served as
director of the Institute of Public Utilities at Michigan State until this
year, were guests at CASTUs roundtable on Sept. 23. Stephen Williams, president
of Local Internet Gateway Co., gave generously of his time in coming to
Columbus from Dayton to lead our Oct. 21 roundtable. And finally, thanks go,
too, to David Monroe, research specialist in Nationwide InsuranceUs advanced
technology group, Allyn Ehrhardt, librarian at Franklin University, Ray Gross,
vice president of sales for Cellular One, and Marsha Greer, Sharon Maynard,
Nick Schneider and Kirby Turner from Ohio Bell, who participated in CASTUs
summer symposium on Telecommunications for Small Business.

We believe that CAST meets a vital need. We will continue
to ask you for your support, and we want you to continue to think of us for
your information needs in telecommunications. Call or write us to find out
whoUs doing what -- and call or write us to let us know what youUre doing.
Jane Fraser
Thomas McCain
Co-Directors

               * * * * *

On-Line for you

The purpose of CAST calendar is to facilitate networking
and interdisciplinary research on telecommunications.
Please let us know what you are doing so we can pass
the information on to others.  The calendar is edited by
Ann Hollifield.

CAST is located at 210 Baker Systems, 1971 Neil  Ave.,
The Ohio State University,  Columbus, OH
43210-1271, [phone].

Office, Susan Brown, secretary..........................292-8444
FAX.....................................................................292-785
2
[e-mail]
Electronic Bulletin Board [e-mail]
Jane M. Fraser, Co-Director..............................292-4129
Thomas A. McCain, Co-Director.......................292-3095
Ann Hollifield, Research Associate...................292-0080
Sherri N. Smith, Conference Coordinator.........292-8444


               * * * * *

Economists call for new regulatory framework

Public policy must begin to adapt itself to the increasingly complex structures
of the telecommunications industry.

That was the message presented by two internationally renowned policy experts
at the Sept. 23 CAST roundtable. Drs. William H. Melody and Harry M. Trebing
tackled the question of redefining telecommunications public policy in the face
of the ever increasing pace of technology development and the deregulation of
monopoly markets.

Melody is the founding director of the Centre for International Research on
Communication and Information Technologies (CIRCIT) in Melbourne, Australia. He
also served as chief economist for the Federal Communications Commission during
the early and decisive years of deregulation and was an expert witness in the
Justice DepartmentUs antitrust case against AT&T.


 Melody noted that telecommunications services have been transformed in recent
years from a service provided by either the government or by a
government-regulated monopoly to a privately produced product that is sold in
competitive markets. At the same time, he said, public policy makers have moved
from seeing telecommunications as a basic utility in which universal service
was thought of as a social good, to seeing it as an economic resource that is
critical in the development of the entire economy.

In addition, Melody said, the policy situation is becoming increasingly
complicated by a long list of side issues and industries that have been added
to the picture. While the traditional telecommunications structure is still at
the center of policy making, Melody noted that the equipment manufacturing and
computing industries also are now part of the system, and  public policy is
expected to consider the effects of telecommunication policy decisions on these
industries. Policy effects on applications and services that depend on
telecommunications, such as manufacturing, health care, education, finance and
rural development, also now must enter into regulatorsU decisions.

Adding to the muddled picture is the increasing internationalization of
telecommunications corporations, a factor that makes it ever more difficult for
regulators to gain the information they need about the companies they must
regulate.

These issues, Melody argued, call into question the traditional structures of
public utility regulation. Researchers should be focusing on such issues as
whether existing laws are adequate, the criteria that regulators should be
using in deciding policy questions, the information that should be available on
telecommunications networks, the effects of policy on the computer industry and
end users, and whether the locus of telecommunications regulation should be
state, national or even international.

In his personal evaluation of the last question, Melody said he believes that
state regulation may be obsolete, unable any longer to adequately deal with
policy questions that range across national and international boundaries.

Trebing, director of the Institute of Public Utilities at Michigan State until
earlier this year, disagreed that state regulation should be abandoned, noting
that state commissions have been particularly effective in experimenting with
new types of regulation. Trebing also outlined a different set of research
priorities in the field of telecommunications policy. He said the field needs
to examine the profit levels of Local Exchange Carriers (LECs) and
Interexchange Carriers (IXCs),  the impact of existing pricing and
interconnection policies on the development of an integrated/complementary
network, and the redefinition of basic service.

Trebing, who previously served as chief economist for the U.S. Postal Rate
Commission and as chief of the economic studies division of the Federal
Communications Commission,  focused his remarks on the issues raised for policy
makers by the changes in telecommunications network infrastructure. He noted
that in the new arena, competition is created not only by different industry
players but also by alternative delivery systems. He argued that policy makers
must begin to examine network economies, the structure of demand and societal
values.

Key questions among the issues that he said policy must begin to address are
whether unbundling and policies such as co-location facilitate competitive or
complementary relationships among players, whether competitive networks are --
in the long run --
either viable or socially desirable, and whether policy makers should be
working towards the creation of an integrated, efficient combination of
technologies.

Trebing noted that finding answers to these issues will not be simple.
Networks, which have large sunk costs and long gestation periods, pose
significant questions for the sustainability of competition. Studies on market
share have shown that often more than 50 percent of the market is needed to
achieve efficiency. The implications for competition, he said, are obvious.

On the market side, Trebing said studies have shown a clear separation among
large business, public sector, residential and small business uses of
telecommunications networks. As large purchasers of telecommunications
services, big businesses have huge power in negotiating with providers. Trebing
said there is an inherent conflict between the value of a service that is
reflected in the maximum price that a consumer is willing to pay, and the
public utility concept that a service is necessary and the ability to extort
must be controlled so that prices are set on costs. This conflict between
seeing the  telecommunications industry as a utility and as a competitive
market for goods and services will not be easy to resolve, Trebing indicated.

Trebing spoke to the roundtable from 10 pages of detailed notes, which are
available as CAST Working File 1992-011.

               * * * * *



Entrepreneur outlines plan for local Internet access

Stephen Williams believes he may have the key to providing low-cost access to
the Internet system for small businesses and individual computer users.

Williams, president of Local Internet Gateway Co. in Dayton, says he has found
a way to offer small users full access to electronic mail (E-mail) and limited
access to newsgroups for a price starting at an estimated $5 per month,  plus
$2 per hour.  RWhat IUm putting together is a turnkey system,S he said.

Williams, who presented his ideas at the CAST roundtable on Oct. 21, said he
will be able to offer the service by downloading batches of information from a
satellite, as opposed to over a telephone line. Users will then dial up his
computer to access the data and to file messages they want  posted to E-mail.

Internet is the network of university and research computers initially
established with federal government funds. Users with an interactive connection
to Internet can log in remotely to sites around the world to locate and
download publicly accessible files. All users, even those without an
interactive connection, can exchange electronic mail. In addition, newsgroups,
a collection of electronic bulletin boards on a wide range of topics, are
available to most Internet accounts. While Internet still operates under what
is called the Racceptable use policy,S which bars commercial use on the
federally funded backbone, these restrictions are hazy and are being relaxed.
Commercial uses of other parts of Internet are increasing and many companies,
especially those in computer related areas, are finding that connecting to
Internet makes business sense.

WilliamsU system addresses a crucial problem in expanding access to the
Internet system for small users and users who live at some distance from a
regular Internet access provider, such as a university. The cost of
long-distance telephone calls can make connecting to the network prohibitively
expensive, cutting many potential users off from a source of information and
communication. Williams, like other entrepreneurs, has been seeking ways to
solve the problem by creating local gateways to Internet. RI really think you
need a commercial solution with low startup costs,S  he said.

The question, however, is how a locally based service-provider can connect to
Internet on behalf of subscribers while avoiding high dial-up fees. Williams
noted that Internet carries about 40 megabytes of information on network news
alone each day. That would require eight to 10 hours a day to download through
a 9600 baud modem at a cost of between $10,000 and $12,000 per month. While
such costs are bearable in large cities where there is a critical mass of
potential customers, in small towns and isolated communities, there simply
would not be enough customers to cover the providerUs costs in offering such a
connection.

By using a satellite downlink, however, Williams said he will be able to
download the information from net news 24 hours a day, at a minimal cost,
allowing him to sell access to his information base for a manageable fee. The
disadvantage, he admits, is that small and long-distance users will not have a
fully interactive connection to Internet. Williams believes, however, that even
that problem may be solvable eventually by offering an Rinteractive happy
hour,S during which users would share the cost of an interactive connection to
the system for a particular period of time. He said it also would be possible
to offer a fully interconnected service, but only if the customer were willing
to bear the full cost of the tie.

WilliamsU goal is to market a Rstable E-mailS address to small businesses, as
well as a full network news feed, archive services and an interactive Internet
connection on demand. The question is finding enough users of these services to
make it worth his while. RWhat IUve been trying to do for a long time is figure
out how to get to that critical mass.S

In addition to his position at Local Internet Gateway Co., Williams also is
president of Concinnous Consulting Inc. and SDW Systems.


               * * * * *

CAST appoints new graduate research associate for 1992-93

Ann Hollifield has joined CAST as the CenterUs new graduate research associate.
Hollifield is in the first year of her doctoral program in OSUUs Department of
Communication. The focus of her work is telecommunications, with a specialized
area of interest in the economics of media and information systems.

Her background includes 14 years as a media professional. Hollifield worked in
the television industry for seven years, first as a reporter, news producer and
anchor for commercial television and later as a documentary producer for Public
Television. In 1984 she came to Ohio from the West Coast to earn her masterUs
degree at the OSU School of Journalism in the Kiplinger Fellowship in Public
Affairs Reporting program.

In 1986, Hollifield joined the Columbus business newspaper Business First as a
reporter, becoming managing editor of the paper in 1987. In 1991, she was
awarded a Robert Bosch Foundation Fellowship and spent last year in Germany,
where she worked for the media policy department of the German Press and
Information Ministry and for Verlagsgesellschaft Madsack, the fifth largest
newspaper publishing company in Germany. While in Europe, she was engaged in
two research projects. One examined the economic outlook for the German
newspaper industry during the next decade, and the second studied the problems
being encountered by German media firms as they invest in Eastern Europe.