hope springs eternal

[David Farber <farber () central cis upenn edu>]

From: brpinc () access digex net (BRP Publications)
Newsgroups: alt.politics.datahighway
Subject: Interview with Ray Smith
Date: 10 Nov 1993 16:47:44 -0500


As I wrote yesterday, I did an interview with Bell Atlantic Chairman
Raymond Smith a few weeks ago.  I only had a few minutes with him, but I
was able to get him to describe his vision of a future information
highway.  Since he's the one most likely to build it (not the Clinton
Administration or any gubmint agency) perhaps we should center on his
views rather than on some concocted fear about gubmint control on the flow
of information.  Frankly, we have recourse when gubmint infringes on our
right to speak in a public forum, while we do not while using a commercial
online service (go to Prodigy and do the George Carlin 7 dirty word test
if you think I'm wrong).  The Info Highway WILL BE COMMERCIAL.  Ray
Smith's vision is fairly benign, however.  The one thing he did say that
alarmed me is that he will run the servers as "jukeboxes".  Only Bell
Atlantic's jukeboxes will charge you to put content up AND to take it off.
On the bright side, they will provide a "telephony" model, which means
that anybody will be able to provide content...anyway here's the scoop.


Shortly before testifying before Sen. Howard M. Metzenbaum's Judi-
ciary subcommittee Oct. 27. Bell Atlantic Corp.'s
Chairman Raymond W. Smith met with reporters for a preview of the
company's Stargazer video-on-demand menuing system and to answer
questions about the regional Bell operating company's proposed merger
with Tele-Communications Inc.


Information and Interactive Services Report:  "How relevant are the
charges that owning the network and owning
programming creates and anticompetitive atmosphere for interactive en-
tertainment networks?  Are information providers going to be blocked
out?"


Raymond Smith:  "Do those who own it and provide content have a pre-
ferred position?  Well that was a model of a cable system that had 30
channels and there was only one in each town--when there was limited
capacity.  We're going to offer virtually unlimited shelf space.  Anybody
who has a product--we'll rent you shelf space and we'll deliver it to the
home.  If the homes buy it--you've got a product.  We'll do it regionally,
we'll do it national, we'll do it city by city and we hope that there are not
50 applications for the network, but 10,000 applications for the network."


IISR:  "So, do you think that the 500-channel cable system is a misnomer--
the wrong idea?"


RS:  "Yes.  It's the infinite channel.  We won't be talking about channels
in the year 2,000.  That will be sort of quaint.  That will be a "do you
remember when..."


IISR: "That sounds like a telco (telephone company) model."


RS:  "It is a telco model.  All of this will be telco.   Only it will be
broad-band, interactive telco.  Not narrowband telco.  It will be switched, we
will
be delivering it exactly to your home.  It will be common carrier when it
starts from the telephone plant and it will be sort of mini common carrier
as the cable act suggests for cable companies."


IISR: "Which side do you think will be easier to build?"


RS:  "We're about to find out.  We're doing it with telephone in Alexan-
dria (Va.), and in Tom's River, N.J. and in Morris County, N.J.  We're
actually building it.  You can go there and see it coming in and being
delivered to the houses.  We're doing it with compressed copper, with
ADSL (asynchronous digital subscriber line) we're doing it with Broad-
band Technologies, which is fiber with coax on the end, and we're going
to do it with fiber all of the way into the home.  So, we're in the early
stages of determining what is the best architecture.  We know that it will
be server-based, it will be digital, it will be broadband, switched and
interactive.  those things we know for sure.  You can start modelling and
doing business plans and you get very excited about this.  The market
studies are absolutely dynamite.  But it's going to take three or four
years.


In 1993 we have a few hundred people that are on a very rudimentary
video-on-demand [system] over ADSL here in Northern Virginia.  Next
year we'll have that in the tens of thousands in Morris County and in
Alexandria.  In the following year it will be well above 100,000.  So it will
not really be until 1996 or 1997 that we start to get into the millions, but
by that time we'll know exactly what all of the services will be.  We'll have
the operating software--which does not exist today--well have the
set-tops.


Clearly, we're talking to companies such as Microsoft and General Instru-
ments and Scientific Atlanta and Broadband Technologies and IBM and
DEC--all of those companies that will build the servers, that will build the
broadband transport, that will build the set-tops, that will build the user
interface.  [Pointing to a demonstration of the Stargazer user interface]
That "mall" kind of thing.  That won't be the only one, and it won't even
look like that when it's finished.  There will a Stargazer, but it will be a
very jolly easy-to-get through interface.


    "If you think of this, this is a rather elegant and complicated engi-
neering problem.  You're going to have to have various ways to distribute
this broadband interactive stuff.  Each one of the technologies fits certain
circumstances.  ADSL is good because you don't have to put up any plant
and where you have demand for the service but you don't have a high
penetration.  Say you have a demand for the service, but it's only 10 per-
cent of a particular community.  Well, do you abandon that community or
do you build the whole plant?  That's where ADSL comes in, because
ADSL is house by house.  You don't equip ADSL for a whole communi-
ty, you equip it house by house by putting in a circuit board.  When that
community gets up to about 20 percent or looks like it's on its way to 30
percent penetration, you start to build fiber out and you use other tech-
nologies and you take those boards out and you take them to another
network.  It's fungible, it's transportable.  That's why it's good.  When
people say it's interim, well it's interim but we'll still be using that
technology at 6 megabits, which is a super-duper HDTV signal, 15 years from
now.


    "Only 60 percent of houses [subscribe to] cable today, and only 80
percent can get it.  We'll be able to deliver it anywhere there's a tele-
phone line.  And the 6 megabit is the one for 1995.  Those contracts are
being reviewed right now and they'll build out that system."
-----end.


So this is the guy who's likely to build and operate the highway--he
doesn't sound too bad, does he?  I can tell you one thing, however, it's
not going to be your father's Internet.


Nate Zelnick, Associtae Editor, IISR