• RIDING THE POLICY TILT-A-WHIRL

Push is rapidly coming to shove in the escalating conflict between the cable industry and the nation’s phone companies over who will deliver video to U.S. consumers — though at this point, both industries would probably like to give Congress, rather than each other, a good heave-ho.

Proposed legislation during the past couple of months — a “consumer” bill for cable re-regulation, the FCC’s solidifying the technical details of “video dial tone” service for the telcos, and a bill to re-regulate the Regional Bell Operating Companies (RBOCs) back out of information services — has both industries clambering for a strategic foothold on a playing field that appears to be tilting crazily at the mercy of political whims.

If nurtured carefully, a national network made up of cable and phone lines, as well as other delivery vehicles such as satellite and cellular networks, could very quickly provide the foundation for a whole new phase of economic growth. But bad policy right now could take years to undo, and with an already limping U.S. economy, the government can ill afford slamming doors in the face of opportunity.

• ACOT BREAKS THE EDUCATION MOLD

One thing that almost everyone agrees upon is that the educational system in the United States is broken. Many of today’s high school and even college graduates are unprepared for the demands of the working world. Those who believe in radical reform don’t believe that new textbooks or a higher ratio of teachers to students per classroom can solve the education problem in the United States. Neither can money, nor for that matter, technology. All of these things can help. But what we really need “is a systemic change in education,” according to Mary Fallon, communications manager for Apple Computer’s Classrooms of Tomorrow research and development project, known as ACOT.

The ACOT research project, which was established in 1985, is founded on the premise that children’s critical thinking skills can be improved through a new approach to education: in this case, ACOT’s own method of constructivist, learn-by-doing teaching, in combination with lots of technology in the classroom.

• I/O
Larry Press covers the first meeting of the Internet Society.
It could be the start of something big.

• GASTON BASTIAENS LEAVES PHILIPS
The spokesman for CD-I leaves a 21-year career at Philips for a job as general manager of Apple PIE. What does it mean for the CD-I standard and for Apple?

• SHAREVISION: BETTER THAN BEING THERE?
New Macintosh-based company does document sharing, live video and more — using standard phone service.

• Bellcore’s new panning camera
Telecom researchers invent a wide-angle TV electronic panning camera that viewers can manipulate at home.

• BRIEFS
Apple closes Multimedia Lab; Clinton’s “Civilian DARPA”; CD karaoke standard; Videologic and IBM; Europe wants fiber; PhotoCD goes retail; Intel enters handheld market; TV Answer and Syntellect; Bell Labs and CableLabs do PCS; VR as videoconference.

• EVENTS
The Western Show

>FOCUS

RIDING THE TILT-A-WHIRL
Proposed laws may make the going even more slippery for cable, telcos

Push is rapidly coming to shove in the escalating conflict between the cable industry and the nation’s phone companies over who will deliver video to U.S. consumers — though at this point, both industries would probably like to give Congress, rather than each other, a good heave-ho.

Proposed legislation during the past couple of months — a “consumer” bill for cable re-regulation, the FCC’s solidifying the technical details of “video dial tone” service for the telcos, and a bill to re-regulate the Regional Bell Operating Companies (RBOCs) back out of information services — has both industries clambering for a strategic foothold on a playing field that appears to be tilting crazily at the mercy of political whims.

No time for bad policy. Though to some extent all these proposals (especially the re-regulation bills) seem to have at their core a desire to make the world a safer place for consumers, they ignore the long-term ramifications of their actions. They might lower some costs in the short term, but what’s more likely to happen is that both industries will bring to a screeching halt their plans for investment in an upgraded telecommunications infrastructure. This would considerably slow progress toward a sufficiently powerful delivery platform for new consumer information services, and on a larger scale, for digital media as a whole.

If nurtured carefully, the cable and phone lines that these services require for delivery — services ranging from interactive TV to custom news delivery, and scores of things no one’s even thought of yet — could very quickly provide the foundation for a whole new phase of economic growth. But bad policy right now could take years to undo, and with an already limping U.S. economy, the government can ill afford slamming doors in the face of opportunity.

HELPING THE ‘WOUNDED BEARS’ RETURN TO THE COMPETITIVE ARENA

Much of the regulatory policy proposed by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) over the past couple of years has been directed toward nudging the RBOCs — “the wounded bears of American business,” according to one industry watcher — back into the competitive arena after years of operating as a regulated monopoly.

Even after the Modified Final Judgment (MFJ) that broke up the Bell system more than a decade ago, so stringent were regulations about where and when the RBOCs could compete that it seemed illegal for them to so much as think about innovative technologies or services that might increase revenue. Their technology labs brimmed with inventive engineers, but they couldn’t even sell what they’d invented to an outside company to commercialize.

The stiff regulations were not undeserved. After all, let’s not forget that there were serious monopolistic practices at play that caused the breakup of AT&T in the first place — a danger that many, particularly the newspaper industry, believe is still imminent.

But FCC chairman Al Sikes believes that since the MFJ broke up the Bell System, sufficient safeguards are in place to make sure the Baby Bells don’t throw around their still-formidable weight.

Sikes admits that the main thrust behind most everything the FCC does today is to level the playing field so that the phone companies, still operating under regulatory pressure in most areas of their business, can find the economic incentive to upgrade their existing copper plant to fiber optics and create a thriving, deregulated, highly competitive national network (see Vol. 2, No. 1, p. 9). This is his mission, and as the November election approaches, it’s clear that Sikes is trying to get as much done toward this goal as he can while he still has a job.

BROOKS BILL TRIES TO RE-REGULATE THE RBOCS

Sikes believes RBOCs may be willing to take the financial risk of investing in fiber networks if they are allowed to compete in the potentially lucrative information services market. One very hot segment of that market is the delivery of television or video signals into the home, or “video dial tone” — an area that the cable industry has virtually owned for many years and, many believe, taken advantage of by charging unjustifiably high subscription fees.

Deliberately striving to give cable an equally large competitor, the FCC has just finished crafting the regulatory framework for video dial tone (more on this later). But there’s another bill in Congress, authored by Jack Brooks, head of the House Judiciary Committee, that would essentially re-regulate the RBOCs out of information services before they’d even begun.

You haven’t heard much about MFJ Bill H.R. 5096 since its introduction in May, mostly because it’s being soft-pedaled by the phone companies. They hope that the politics of the situation will keep the bill from passing: Insiders say Brooks is locked in a power struggle over the bill with Edward Markey, chair of the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and Finance and author of the cable re-regulation bill.

“The Brooks bill would be a disaster,” says one RBOC representative. “We’re looking at it as the death knell — it would close us out [from competing for information services] for more than five years.”

Bill Bechmann, manager of corporate strategy for RBOC Ameritech, says that part of the reason the Brooks bill even came to pass is because the telcos “do a horrible job communicating what our jobs are.” If they were better able to articulate their cause, he says, the re-regulation bills would likely never have seen the light of day.

“The issue is consumers,” he says. “One of the biggest issues that Congress hears about from its constituents is cable pricing and quality of service. That’s where competition would be of value. We have quality and could deliver good pricing. As we’ve gotten competitors over the years, our quality improves and our pricing gets more competitive.”

Bechmann adds, “In the past, the phone company used its monopoly powers inappropriately. In this case, we’re looking at a reverse situation. Cable has the advantage there, delivering entertainment.”

WELCOME TO H.R. 4850: BRINGING CABLE COSTS DOWN?

Which brings us to H.R. 4850. Though some might see this, in combination with the Brooks bill, as a bulldozer for the playing field between the RBOCs and telcos, it does not make eyes twinkle at the FCC.

Submitted by Markey, H.R. 4850 would require that cable rates and services be regulated by the FCC. Some estimate that such regulations would put enormous pressure on the agency — requiring as many as 700 additional employees and nearly half its budget. Though there’s no official commission policy on the bill, “We’ve tried to prevent it from happening,” says Robert Pepper, director of the Office of Plans and Policy for the FCC.

We can see why. Such legislation creates an enormous additional bureacracy for any government agency, and especially one that’s as traditionally overloaded as the FCC. Don’t forget this is also the office that handles the regulations for ham radio, broadcast radio, television, cellular communication, HDTV and wireless computing, in addition to cable and telephone networks and every other newfangled network “thing” that the engineers can dream up.

‘The fire bell is ringing.’ President George Bush is expected to veto the legislation if it ever gets to his desk (it’s undergoing a substantial rewrite in the Senate now), and the National Cable Television Association (NCTA) in Washington, DC, is frothing with opposition to the bill.

NCTA president and CEO James Mooney says the “consumer” aspects of the legislation are politically motivated, and the NCTA states flatly that the bill as written will actually cost cable customers more money. Mooney issued a statement on July 24, in response to the House of Representatives vote on the bill: “Chances of Congress coming up with a reasonable cable bill went last night from 20 percent to near zero… . The fire bell is ringing; it’s time for the entire industry to answer it.”

Regulate and protect. The bill has some very good safeguards built into it, which should become standard across the board as the United States baby-steps its way to a real telecommunications policy. But the problem is that the bill as written today has potential to do the opposite of what it’s intended to do. Instead of saving consumers money, it could generate enormous costs — these in addition to whatever additional tax burden will be passed on in the form of citizen-supported FCC bureaucracy to enforce the regulations.

If this bill passes, the cable industry is sanctioned to pass along the costs of whatever it invests in network development, programming and technology to consumers — just like the phone companies do now via state Public Utility Commissions — at no risk to its bottom line. In this case, regulation equals protection, not more competition.

Of course, the cable industry’s monopoly status grants it virtually the same pass-along privileges today, but the wave of the future will likely force it to change its ways. Trying to regulate today’s cable rate structure through legislation is, in many ways, a laughable pursuit. Certainly it can be done, but when you consider a decade hence, doing so through legislation will prove itself to have been a massive waste of time and money.

COMPETITION IS THE AMERICAN WAY

The irony is that the United States is in a unique position with regard to telecommunications — one that is the envy of the rest of the world. The U.S. is the only major market in the world with a high penetration of cable — and thus the only major market that already has high-bandwidth (coax) wires running past most homes. This means that the United States is the only major market that is in a position to create a truly competitive telecommunications infrastructure.

This, it seems to us, is what Sikes would dearly like to accomplish. The FCC would like to encourage both the cable companies and the phone companies to build high-capacity communication networks and to compete with each other across the board: video services, data services, voice and video phone services — everything.

Because they already have coax cable installed past the home (and, in most cases, into the home), because they can derive profit from the material they transmit, and because they are entrepreneurial in nature, the cable operators start with an advantage. The FCC would like to provide incentives to the phone companies that will help to level the playing field.

When we discussed this with some of the major Japanese consumer electronics manufacturers on a recent trip to Japan, they were puzzled. Is it not wasteful, they asked, to build two competing high-bandwidth telecommunications infrastructures when one should be sufficient to carry all of the traffic?

Our answer was that Americans have learned that the best curb on monopoly abuses, the best way to deflate entrenched bureaucracies, and the best way to encourage investment, innovation and low prices for consumers is through competition. In the long run, encouraging development of two healthy competing communication highway networks will bring low-cost, high-bandwidth communications to the United States far faster than could be accomplished by any other means — and will almost certainly provide the foundation for an explosion of new ways of working and new services that will provide tremendous lift to the United States economy.

CONFUSING THE VALUE OF CONDUIT AND CONTENT

In fact, what might be about to happen, if government steps lightly, is very closely analogous to what’s happened in the personal computer industry. Every major computer and chip manufacturer in the business has acknowledged, with varying levels of chagrin, that personal computers and electronics hardware in general have become a commodity. The only way to make money today is volume — selling lots of computers as well as lots of ways to use them.

A symbiotic relationship. At the same time, a whole new genre of software — geared toward new and unsophisticated computer users — is taking shape. You may have heard of it; it’s called “multimedia.” It combines images and digital video and text and sound into a new medium that is trying to shape and deliver a new breed of functionality and user experience. There is a growing symbiotic relationship between the need for more powerful computer platforms and applications such as multimedia that show off — and require — that power.

Now consider telecommunications. Wires — whether coaxial cable or copper wire — are already commodities. Virtually everyone has telephone service. Virtually everyone has cable TV delivered into the home. In the telecommunications market of the future, the “applications” of the PC world translate to “information services” — everything from dial-up video to interactive video games and television shows to customized Yellow Pages, and thousands of things we can’t know yet.

Like PC applications, these services also require more power, or bandwidth, and fiber optics can provide that bandwidth. Here, too, a very delicate symbiotic relationship is emerging today between the investments that cable and telcos make in their “platforms” — i.e., the fiber infrastructure that will carry programming and services — and the development of the programs and services that will require use of that fiber.

Universal service is here. One RBOC official agrees. “The theme of universal service, which is really what created the Bell system, is pretty much here. Even low income people have [their] own phones. The margins will be in the content,” he says. “The days of making your money on stuffing a wire as full as you can are pretty much over. It’s still our core business, we’ll still do it. But the pipeline business is growing at 1 to 2 percent a year… . [That's] really one of the best barometers of our business, and it’s pretty flat.”

Despite widely publicized monopolistic behavior toward its customers (or perhaps because of it), cable is the only industry today that is freely and without coercion upgrading its infrastructure to prepare for the future.

Many cable companies, such as Viacom International, are making vast investments in fiber and the technologies that will make it able to compete against the telcos and other service providers. And it is doing so at a rapid clip (see Vol. 2, No. 2, p. 24).

The worst thing that could happen now would be to stop cable from investing in its infrastructure. Why? Because in five years, in a deregulated environment where cable, the RBOCs, the direct broadcast satellite companies and the cellular data network providers are all going after the consumer’s pocketbook with hammer and tongs, the cable industry will have absolutely no choice but to bring its pricing structure and services in line with others who are able to offer the same or similar services. All other things being fair and equal, they will have to become competitive to survive.

VIDEO DIAL TONE A CHALLENGE FOR TELCOS

The cable industry sees video dial tone — the capability for RBOCs to deliver video programming via the phone network — as its Waterloo. For years the only alternative to network television (which was no alternative at all in Manhattan and rural areas where broadcast reception was virtually nonexistent), cable knows the telcos are the only network providers that can actually challenge it in terms of power and ubiquity.

“If video dial tone is deployed, then maintaining the [cable] cartel is impossible,” says one government official. Within the past few weeks, the FCC has taken more steps to ensure video dial tone is indeed deployed. It has adopted rules and a framework for the service, and if all goes smoothly from here (i.e., none of the planned appeals stick), Pepper of the FCC believes phone companies will be able to start filing for specific services and tariffs. “I would expect within the next 18 months we’ll begin to see specific service proposals to offer video dial tone,” he says.

This is particularly threatening to the cable industry, which is responding in part with dramatic posturing, and in part with interesting questions that must be answered.

Here is the dramatic posturing: “When you cut through all the technological ballyhoo, this is a kind of half-step toward encouraging phone companies to build a lot of hugely expensive TV plants, with telephone customers financing the investment,” said NCTA’s Mooney about the FCC’s video dial tone proceeding in mid-July. “The other half-step belongs to Congress; whether they’ll take it remains to be seen.”

Though the NCTA says it “does not oppose the transmission of video programming by telephone companies on a common carrier basis,” it is encouraging the FCC to first establish an “appropriate” regulatory framework to deter “anti-consumer and anti-competitive practices.” (We leave the irony of this concern to you.)

But the NCTA’s major concern, and it is one we share despite the industry’s lousy reputation for service, is that the provision of video dial tone for the RBOCs is a little too paternalistic for their tastes.

In an excerpt from comments made to the FCC earlier this year on video dial tone, the NCTA said, “There are … troubling indications that the Commission may be less concerned, in this proceeding, with fostering an efficient, competitive video marketplace than with hastening the construction of a particular vision of the future — specifically, a vision in which a single, telco-based broadband infrastructure is the basis for voice, data and video telecommunications.”

LINE UP THE DUCKS BEFORE YOU SHOOT

So obviously, the cable industry thinks the FCC has it in for them. But true or not, the bigger question has always been whether or not the RBOCs were clever or capable enough to see this particular brand of writing on the wall and move into a radically new business. Until the past couple of weeks, our answer would have been, “No.”

As recently as the Digital World conference in June, sparse attendance by RBOC representatives — despite vigorous effort on our part to get them involved, either as attendees or speakers — seemed to point to a telco community that remains clueless about the gift called “video dial tone” being handed to it on a silver platter by the FCC.

But according to some RBOC executives, they are doing anything but holding back on the information services market. The problem in part, they say, is that they are getting their ducks in a row before they start shooting. And, they admit, they do a lousy job of presenting their plans and views to the world. This is about to change.

Big changes afoot. Most of the senior executives at the RBOCs today are from the monopoly days. Dealing with the digital world will involve them in services the phone company has never been involved in before. This is not only frightening, but difficult to execute successfully.

Nonetheless, says Ameritech’s Bechmann, they are most certainly examining their alternatives. “We’re transmitting digitally compressed video, trying to understand what our own network infrastructure requires to do that cost-effectively,” he says. “Plus, we’re looking at partnerships and strong ties with cable companies. We hope by the end of the year to understand the whole issue better, what makes more sense strategically.”

Ameritech and Bell Atlantic are among the most active of the seven RBOCs to be investigating what to do with information services. Bell Atlantic, in fact, sponsored the first simultaneous voice and video transmission trial back in 1988, when RBOCs were granted partial relief from MFJ restrictions. And in an attempt to overcome the culture problem of “Bellhead” executives with no experience in market competition, it recently hired two outsiders to lead its foray into video and information services.

“Before fall [when most of the remaining MFJ restrictions were lifted], there were only very specific avenues where you could go,” says Larry Plumb of Bell Atlantic. “After we got across-the-board lifting of restrictions, we said, ‘Gee, we have limited resources and we’ve just been given a meal that we can’t consume.’ We decided to regroup and move ahead rationally — looking carefully at where to put our investments and what businesses were most relevant to us. We went into a period of intense re-evaluation of initiatives and focusing of resources.”

STILL WATERS ARE RUNNING DEEP

Video is definitely at the top of Bell Atlantic’s list. A technology called ADSL (asymmetrical digital subscriber lines) will be the technology Bell Atlantic likely uses first to deliver video (see Vol. 1, No. 11, p. 15). The company has already announced a couple of ADSL trials, one of them an educational multimedia project in New Jersey.

Though it uses copper wire, the company believes ADSL is a good baseline because it can deliver a single channel of full-motion, VHS-quality video signal using compression. After seeing how the market reacts to it, the company will move into fiber or fiber-coax combinations for higher bandwidth delivery. The design concept is to run ADSL over ISDN, which means a customer would still have phone service in addition to video coming into the home.

Own your own. The biggest threat to cable is that the RBOCs may be able to own programming. And certainly this is under consideration. Telco officials say they’re in discussions with a wide variety and number of content providers. “We have not ignored the movie studios,” says one. “We have talked to other smaller production studios that don’t necessarily produce Gone With the Wind, but do produce How to Hang a Door or something similar.”

But ownership of programming is still a sticky issue, legally. The trick is to figure out what kind of leasing arrangements can be made “so that everybody can make money and be happy about doing business.”

In other words, still waters run deep. All the RBOCs, even those not mentioned here, are said to have “some fairly aggressive programs” for delivering information services. They’re looking closely at what arrangements and market strategies make sense. To cut the RBOCs off now via re-regulation would have a devastating effect on a burgeoning area for economic growth not only just for the telcos, but for all the entrepreneurs who need a broadband network to distribute their information products.

WHERE REGULATION WOULD BE BETTER DIRECTED

Regulations in and of themselves are not bad. In fact, when they aren’t designed to micro-manage industries, they are often very good. A large number of the safeguards built into the Markey bill, for example — such as information privacy, technical standards, sufficient access and the like — may cost cable operators money in the short term, but they are of vital importance to the future of telecommunications.

All network providers should expect to make provisions for these safeguards, not just the cable industry. But heavy cost-structure regulations, especially at this critical juncture, would do nothing more than snuff a nascent information services market. As competition escalates, issues such as pricing and service will take care of themselves.

If Congress really wanted to author some “consumer” legislation, it would be better off looking toward the areas of privacy and access in this new, networked world.

Since the majority of Americans get their news from television, why not come up with the equivalent of the phone company’s “lifeline” service that would provide viewers with a highly economical package of cable services that includes a few news networks?

Why not pass legislation requiring that all network types be interoperable, and set up quality and reliability standards? And while they’re at it, why not make sure that the information that programmers glean from the new, two-way links between the TV screen and network provider remains as private as the contents of a consumer’s mailbox or telephone bill?

As we move forward into a world where commerce and communication rely on a national public network, the United States must invest in a national telecommunications policy that not only protects consumers, but helps foster competition in an area where we are indeed the envy of the world.

Denise Caruso

ACOT BREAKS THE EDUCATION MOLD
Big research grants help foster ’systemic change’

One thing that almost everyone agrees upon is that the educational system in the United States is broken. Many of today’s high school and even college graduates are unprepared for the demands of the working world.

Those who believe in radical reform don’t believe that new textbooks or a higher ratio of teachers to students per classroom can solve the education problem in the United States. Neither can money, or for that matter, technology. All of these things can help. But what we really need “is a systemic change in education,” according to Mary Fallon, communications manager for Apple Classrooms of Tomorrow, an Apple Computer research project, known as ACOT.

The ACOT research project, which was established in 1985, is founded on the premise that children’s critical thinking skills can be improved through a new approach to education: in this case, ACOT’s own method of constructivist, learn-by-doing teaching, in combination with lots of technology in the classroom.

Currently, the project has established more than 25 research locations in North America, including schools in Arizona, California, Florida, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas and Canada.

TRADITIONAL ROLES DISAPPEAR BETWEEN STUDENT AND TEACHER

Students attending ACOT classrooms are randomly selected. The only criterion is that ACOT classrooms must reflect the ethnic background of the school that they are located within. For example, if 50 percent of the student body is black, then 50 percent of the students in the ACOT classroom must be black.

At each of these sites the traditional roles of educator and student disappear. In an ACOT classroom teachers “facilitate” learning, leaving behind the traditional “sage on the stage” role. Students work together using computers as tools in the same way most of us used pen and paper to learn.

“Kids who aren’t learning with technology are disadvantaged,” says Fallon, who says that ACOT has done studies showing that combining new learning methods with technology is particularly effective. “Using technology facilitates the learning process because it makes information more fluid. You can access databases, pictures, animations and link them in a nonlinear way. You can’t do that with scissors and paste. And when you can manipulate information, it becomes yours. The learner begins to get fully engaged.”

No silver bullet. That said, Fallon emphasized that she doesn’t think technology is a silver bullet that will dispatch the problems of today’s educational system. “We [at ACOT] always say you have to have technology, assessment and instruction. They are interdependent.”

The picture is bleak indeed. The absence of quality education in the United States today is so vast, according to an April 1992 report done by the U.S. Labor Secretary’s Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills (SCANS), that “more than two in five African-American men, one in three Hispanic men, and one in five white men, all with high school diplomas, did not earn enough to lift a family of four above poverty.”

And in fact the report further states that “little formal training is now being provided to front-line workers as opposed to managers.” So for the individuals that find themselves stuck in this situation, there is little chance beyond high school for improving their situation.

Apple Classrooms of Tomorrow are an attempt to better prepare children in grades K through 12 today for the business world tomorrow. In fact, according to Fallon ACOT classrooms have the “look and feel,” so to speak, of a business environment. “If you have never been in a classroom with technology,” says Fallon, “it feels chaotic. Everyone is busy, working in groups of two or three. Teachers don’t lecture; they coach the kids. And there is freedom of movement. It’s very similar to how you or I interact in a business setting.”

Many of us in the working world, however, are not fortunate enough to get our hands on the equipment these kids have access to. The classrooms are stuffed with Apple computers, laserdisc players, CD-ROM drives, modems, and on-line communication services as well as oodles of the latest software.

Keith Yocam, ACOT’s teacher professional development manager, says he’d even like to see the kids get PowerBooks from Apple. “We like to watch the kids over time and see how technology changes the nature of their work,” he says. “And with technology getting smaller and more mobile, it will be interesting to see what happens.” (Hmmph. How do we get to go to an ACOT school?)

FRUITS OF ACOT RESEARCH SPREAD NATIONALLY

To aid ACOT in its quest to spread its educational philosophy and technological practices, the Apple research center recently received two national education grants. “We’ve been publishing our research for years,” says Fallon, “but now with these two grants we are able to bring our successes and failures to lots of people.”

The first grant was awarded to the National Alliance for Restructuring Education, of which ACOT is a member, by the New American Schools Development Corp., an independent, nonprofit organization established by President George Bush. The mission of NASDC, which calls itself a catalyst for educational change, is “to underwrite the design of new high-performance educational environments to jump-start learning in America.”

Impressive list of participants. The NASDC grant was awarded to the National Alliance for Restructuring Education to design “break the mold” type schools. Apple’s partners in the alliance include the Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce, the Harvard Project on Effective Services, the New Standards Project, the Public Agenda Foundation, the Learning Research and Development Center at the University of Pittsburgh, the Center for the Study of Social Policy, the National Alliance of Business, the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, and Xerox Corp.

Each company or group in the alliance plays a specific role in “remolding” the schools selected by the alliance. Xerox Corp., for example, is working on improving quality management within the educational system. (David Kerns, the former chairman of Xerox and now the assistant secretary of education, created the quality management system while at Xerox and implemented it during a 10-year period before he was asked to take his current position in the federal government.)

Harvard is working on how to address the health needs of students, and the University of Pittsburgh is working on developing new assessment measures — new standardized tests — for students. ACOT, of course, is responsible for bringing the knowledge it has gained about learning and teaching as well as technology into the classroom as a “knowledge building tool.”

The Alliance, which is seeking a total of $20 million over a five-year period from NASDC, initially sought a grant of $3 million for the 1992-93 school year from the nonprofit group so that it can begin planning curriculum, training and research at three schools each in Vermont, Kentucky, and the city of Rochester, NY.

FINALLY, SOME MONEY FOR THE TEACHERS

The second grant awarded to ACOT is a National Science Foundation grant for $1.16 million to be distributed over the next three years. The purpose of the grant is to create year-round technology training clinics for the professional development of teachers. The program is designed to study how to shorten the “time to acceptance” teachers require to apply technology effectively in the classroom. The NSF grant pays three years’ worth of salary for three teachers as ACOT coordinators at each of the initial sites (one in Cupertino, CA, one in Columbus, OH, and one in Nashville, TN). In addition, some of the grant will be used for stipends for teachers participating in the ACOT training programs.

Learning to dance. “Teachers,” says Fallon, “come out of school with this whole lecture mode of teaching. We have to change their belief structure. Most people teach as if knowledge is an abstract thing. You are told about a marshland, but you don’t see it. It’s like learning how to dance without moving your feet. Our philosophy is knowing and doing are interlocked and inseparable.”

Yocam emphasizes that educators are willing and able to try something new. “When you provide teachers with a challenging context,” he says, “they respond to that and make changes.

“The difficulty,” he says, “is getting the context. The current system works against change. It doesn’t allow for teachers to take the time to visit other classrooms. Their accountability is tied directly to test scores on standardized tests. They have no authority to change their classroom, to be able to apply new methods. Many districts in the educational system control these things. Trying to be more constructivist in a typical classroom is impossible if the kids have to get up every 45 minutes.”

CHANGING THE FUNDAMENTAL PREMISES

To combat those types of fundamental problems, part of the NASDC grant will be allocated to research and to an outreach program to educate different institutions and communities about what ACOT is doing. “We will look at societal things like how to get the public more engaged in what’s going on in the school,” says Fallon, who pointed out that only a small portion of the U.S. adult population has children of school age. “We want to find out what the public’s concern is and gauge the gap between what they are interested in vs. what the educators’ goals are. We need to explain the economic realities of an educational system that is unable to teach kids critical thinking skills.”

Can ACOT provide the change necessary for reform? What happens, for instance, when these intellectually stimulated, computer-literate kids, who are used to getting up from their school seats whenever they feel like it, hit traditional, “sit down and shut up” education — perhaps for the first time?

ACOT is, after all, a research project. Despite the longer reach it may have via its new research grants, it does not have the funding or the support to extend its programs and philosophies too far beyond its research locations, some of which are as small as one class of one grade in one school of a district.

You can lead a horse to water … In Memphis, for instance, seventh graders who returned to traditional education after a year in an experimental ACOT class were perceived as “problem students” by their teachers, according to Yocam. “The kids got put into basic programs, and they were seen to be rowdy because they were bored. They eventually went back to the ‘normal functioning’ of a traditional classroom. And that’s an unfortunate thing.”

According to Yocam, the Memphis school district had made a commitment to ACOT to pursue the technology and education goals ACOT established but didn’t follow through with it.

And perhaps this is where skepticism must come in. Although certainly ACOT’s hands-on research has had a positive effect on education, it cannot regulate what happens after the research projects end. Nothing will ultimately change until parents, teachers and society at large take responsibility for how children are educated. As ACOT is finding out, you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.

Janice Maloney

>NEWS

WHAT DOES IT MEAN?
Gaston Bastiaens leaves CD-I for PIE

It was one of the most surprising — even shocking — pieces of news to come across the transom in quite some time: Gaston Bastiaens, public and vocal champion of the CD-I standard for consumer electronics devices, jumped ship after 21 years at Philips to become the general manager for Apple Computer’s new Personal Interactive Electronics (PIE) division.

One can only imagine the delicacy of the negotiations, since not even a pre-announcement whisper came from Apple, which should be dubbed the “Leak-of-the-Week Club” for its inability to keep anything secret. The announcement on the subject seemed to slip out of Apple’s back door and contained nary a quote from any of the principals involved. We can only imagine how Jan Timmer, chairman of Philips and the original flag-bearer for CD-I, took the news.

The move has significant ramifications on the tenor, if not the substance, of the nascent market for interactive multimedia of the type that Philips and Apple have been hyping for many years.

Swiping Bastiaens from Philips has the potential to be a major score for Apple. There are not many people in the world with his deep knowledge and understanding of the technical and marketing issues involved in selling a new interactive consumer technology.

Those who had lost faith in Apple’s commitment to interactive multimedia — and that would be just about every software developer, at this point — can take heart that rumors of revitalized consumer CD player devices (Sweetpea et al.) are without a doubt true.

In addition, and this is probably why he tiptoed across the Atlantic to his new post, Bastiaens has for the past four years been responsible for the entire CD-I business for Philips. He knows everything there is to know about how Philips intends to sell the product; he was the liaison between CD-I standards development partners Sony and Matsushita; he had a hand in all things CD-I from product development to manufacturing to software and titles creation, marketing and sales.

Not to mention that he’s managed to figure out how to put full-screen, full-motion video onto a compact disc.

How the Apple announcement addressed this issue is by saying, “As standards are important in electronic publishing, Gaston will investigate solutions for compatibility for CD-I and Apple media products.”

WHAT DOES IT MEAN FOR PHILIPS AND CD-I?

At first glance, one might assume that Bastiaens’ move sounds the death knell for CD-I, a technology that has had a very difficult time getting off the ground, even after Philips has invested many hundreds of millions of dollars trying to snare consumer interest.

Bastiaens and Timmer have been flogging the technology to virtually no effect for many years, and one must assume that Philips’ investors will see Bastiaens’ defection as a sign that CD-I is a dead end.

However, most CD-I development is already done on the Macintosh. Many Macintosh multimedia developers turned to Philips for production money when Apple abandoned them a couple of years ago, and have since honed many of the skills necessary to produce interactive CD titles.

So one could speculate that the “compatibility” referred to in the press announcement may eventually include Apple helping Philips divest itself of the weight of being the standard-bearer for an unpopular technology, while at the same time acquiring some of the necessary (and Mac-based) tools and skills for interactive multimedia development that Philips has so assiduously cultivated and acquired.

Instead of being the death knell for CD-I, Bastiaens may actually be able to move it more into the mainstream. It’s a long shot, but stranger things have happened.

In fact, the inroads that CD-I has made — Sony still plans to release CD-I into the industrial training and education markets, while Matsushita still intends to release it as a consumer platform — may benefit Apple as well.

CULTURE CLASH SEEMS INEVITABLE

In any case, it will be very interesting to see how Bastiaens makes the transition to the wide-open Apple culture. Bastiaens has in the past been distant and elusive, but those of us who follow this industry hope that he will adapt himself to the more communicative Apple style.

In order to help jump-start a new technology area, he must learn from the past and leave behind the closed, combative style that’s been the signature of Philips’ press relations.

Though it took a few years, Apple’s commitment to multimedia and digital media — through incessant technology demonstrations, both in public and private — has finally begun to pay off, and Apple is perceived as being at the forefront of the activity in all the hot new electronics areas. Selling a new consumer technology won’t be easy, and Apple will need every winning personality it can find to get the job done.

Denise Caruso

BETTER THAN BEING THERE?
ShareVision provides document sharing, live video and audio over standard phone lines

In a technology announcement that it hopes will wreak havoc with our frequent-flyer accounts, ShareVision Technology, Inc., of San Jose, CA, has unveiled plans for producing the first “desktop visual communications” system that offers two-way communication — including digital video and audio, collaborative document sharing and an interactive white board — that uses “plain old” telephone service over standard copper phone lines.

Based on signal compression techniques and a proprietary technology ShareVision calls “vector adaptive transform processing” (VATP), the company claims it can turn ordinary Macintosh computers equipped with NuBus slots into videoconferencing systems with no special service requirements.

The technologies, demonstrated during the keynote address at this month’s Macworld Expo in Boston, are likely to be incorporated into a product that includes a screen-based telephone (using an earphone, which has a uni-directional microphone) that mixes digital voice and video in a single bitstream, as well as software that allows both voice and video Email, a shared whiteboard, real-time document sharing and mark-up, motion video and high-resolution still-image capture, built-in send-and-receive fax capabilities, a V.32 bis data modem and a sound digitizer.

The company hopes it will be able to ship the conferencing product for less than $4,000 before year-end. That price would include two NuBus boards for audio and video, an inexpensive video camera, software and telephone hardware. Marketing vice president Dean Tucker claims ShareVision’s setup is equal in quality to systems costing $50,000.

Products that compete with ShareVision, he says, such as Northern Telecom’s VISIT system, require customers to use Northern’s own telephones, switches and central office.

FROM THE LOINS OF APPLE ATG

ShareVision was founded in 1991 by four Apple Computer scientists, three of them from Apple’s Advanced Technology Group and one from Apple’s Video Product Group. They include Lung Yeh, president and cofounder, who handled research and development in the area of image and video compression algorithms at ATG; Dan Wright, also from ATG, an expert in real-time image compression; Frank Chu, who helped develop video compression algorithms for implementing MPEG video compression at ATG; and Mike Mruzik, who was heavily involved in digital video compression and custom chip design while with Apple’s Video Group.

Their technical expertise, combined with an elegant software interface, may have created a new product category — desktop visual communications — with an almost frightening potential for increasing productivity in business.

For instance, if ShareVision’s “collaborative document sharing and screen-based telephone hardware and software” live up to the company’s promise, users will be able to share and edit documents with colleagues based in sites as remote as the Pacific Rim — or as close as coworkers in the next cubicle — with the same ease they can send E-mail messages today.

YOU CAN HAVE IT OR NOT, IT STILL WORKS

If the recipient of a ShareVision video phone call does not have a ShareVision system installed in his or her Macintosh, the software simply reverts the call to analog voice. But if both have ShareVision systems, then the computer becomes a fully functional, screen-based telephone, answering machine and collaborative work tool.

Video E-mail can be stored and forwarded, and video conversations can be recorded for later playback, either as ShareVision’s proprietary bitstream or transferred into QuickTime format for distribution to non-ShareVision users.

Using ShareVision’s proprietary software for compression, preprocessing and filtering of images, each of the two parties involved (at this point the technology is for two-way communication only) will appear in a scrollable video window (2½×2½ inches is the largest it can be) that runs at up to 10 frames per second, depending on what other data is being manipulated at the same time. While the video may be a bit choppy, the digital audio operates in real-time.

“Video conferencing by itself isn’t a compelling enough application,” says Tucker. “But we believe people will spend $3,000–4,000 to get ease of use and multiple functionality over ubiquitous phone service.”

Janice Maloney and Denise Caruso

BELLCORE INVENTS NEW CAMERA
‘Electronic panning’ device opens viewing range

Sometimes it’s a pity this newsletter isn’t in video form, because one has to see it to understand the true niftiness of the new electronic panning camera invented at Bellcore, a U.S. telecommunications research facility based in Morristown, NJ.

The electronic panning camera was invented by Lanny Smoot, David Braun, Terry Nelson and Bill Nilson of Bellcore, and today provides a 60-degree field of view, compared to the standard television viewing angle of 25 to 30 degrees.

The viewing angle itself is significant because it is so much wider than standard, but obviously it wouldn’t be helpful by itself, since a TV screen’s aspect ratio is considerably narrower. But as part of the system, Bellcore has developed a touch screen that allows the viewer to physically “push” the picture in the horizontal plane to change his or her viewing angle.

So if a sports fan wanted to keep an eye on the basket, for example, instead of the players, he or she could simply “push” the picture over to the basket and wait for the action to reach that end of the court. In a video teleconference, the viewer could move the picture around to watch various co-workers’ responses to a suggestion.

What’s most interesting about the technology, however, is that the camera is actually stationary, thus it is viewer independent. Since the camera doesn’t move, it automatically records all 60 degrees at once. Thus the term “electronic” panning: the panning is not the mechanical process usually used by video cameras, so the entire picture is available for individual manipulation by hundreds or thousands or even millions of viewers at once, as long as they have the proper equipment. In other words, the viewer is not controlling the camera — the viewer simply controls what part of the picture he or she wants to see.

A touch screen is not the only interface device. A remote control to move the picture back and forth has been devised, and an interface also exists that allows a viewer to automatically track the movement of one particular object or person across the field of view.

In the future, 360 degrees. Michael Giovia of Bellcore says that working versions of the camera in Bellcore’s labs can actually provide a 180-degree viewing angle, and researchers see no reason why they can’t create a fully stationary camera that can actually record a 360-degree picture.

Though not many details are available, Giovia says the analog camera is really two cameras that use a patented digital technology to merge the images seamlessly. As Bellcore does research for telephone companies, Giovia says it’s likely that the technology will first be used to transmit video images over phone lines.

Co-inventor Smoot says there would be very little modification to the existing network required to deliver the electronic panning feature, especially on ISDN lines using ADSL, the asymmetrical digital subscriber line technology that many telcos are viewing as their first platform to deliver video to the home.

What’s next? Giovia says the system is analog right now, but could be digital in the future — which would help, if a digital HDTV standard is settled upon. “We’re fairly early in the process right now,” he says. “Some patents are pending on certain components in the system.”

He’s unwilling to speculate on what Bellcore might do with the technology, other than the obvious: “Maybe the patents will be licensed,” he says.

Denise Caruso

>BRIEFS

APPLE’S MULTIMEDIA LAB IS CLOSING

An era will end in October when Apple Computer closes the doors to its world-famous and much emulated Multimedia Lab at 3220 Sacramento Street in San Francisco. For many years, the Multimedia Lab operated in secret, developing the technologies that Apple eventually trumpeted to a world skeptical about the benefits of interacting with digital video, sound, graphics and text.

The ranks at the lab began thinning more than a year ago, as the technologies it researched moved into development phases at Apple. Lab director Kristina Hooper Woolsey says all remaining lab staffers are “safe and sound” and moving into new territory, just like the technologies they helped develop.

CLINTON ENDORSES ‘CIVILIAN DARPA’

Democratic presidential candidate Bill Clinton has proposed a new strategy to provide support for the development of innovative technologies in the United States. His plan calls for the creation of a new, nonmilitary agency modeled after the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

Clinton outlined his plan for a “civilian DARPA” in a written statement to the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers. The agency would identify technologies capable of launching new growth industries or revitalizing traditional ones over the next two decades.

Funding would be given to companies researching and developing these key technologies. It would encourage and promote collaborative efforts of companies and research institutes, much as the Pentagon has done for the defense industry during the past 40 years.

Tax incentives figure prominently in the plan. Tax credit for R&D would become permanent. In addition, a new enterprise tax cut would benefit start-up businesses.

In his address to the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE), Clinton expressed specific interest in creating a national information network. With more than half of the nation’s workforce employed in information-intensive industries, “we need a door-to-door fiber-optics system by the year 2015 — a link to every home, lab, classroom and business in America,” he said.

The United States Activities division of IEEE is distributing free copies of Clinton’s statement. For more information, contact Pender McCarter, IEEE-USA, 1828 L Street, NW, Suite 1202, Washington, DC 20036-5104; phone: (202) 785-0017, fax (202) 785-0835.

Clinton’s written statement, addressed to the IEEE, came in response to a questionnaire sent to the candidate and President George Bush regarding the U.S. technology policy. IEEE says it has not yet received a response from President Bush.

SING ALONG WITH JVC AND PHILLIPS

Hoping to give consumers a new reason to buy CD-data players, JVC (Victor Company of Japan, Ltd.) and Philips announced in June that they are developing a CD video standard incorporating MPEG (Motion Picture Experts Group) capability compression/decompression that is specifically designed for — grab onto your microphones — karaoke systems.

Karaoke, for the uninitiated, is the amazingly popular bar pastime of lip-synching to music videos that are subtitled with the lyrics of a song.

Lest you doubt the wisdom or need for such a CD standard, which is expected to be formalized by the end of the year, JVC and Philips both predict that the “karaoke field is expected as the most popular application for the CD with motion pictures” and that the new format will broaden the “use of karaoke not only in Japan but in the United States and Europe for home use as well as industrial use.”

The attributes of the new karaoke CD system include the capability to fit 74 minutes of digital video and stereo sound on a five-inch CD using the MPEG video and audio compression and decompression standard. C-Cube Microsystems of San Jose, CA, will be providing JVC with its CL450 MPEG chip, which handles video (but not audio) decompression, according to Rick Rasmussen, C-Cube vice president of marketing. JVC and Philips will be using their own implementation of MPEG audio compression in the system.

The karaoke discs, which include a separate data track for recording the basic karaoke data (titles and lyrics) along with digital video and audio, will be compatible with CD players and computer platforms and other consumer electronic display devices that support CD-IFMV, a full-motion CD-I video standard based specifically on MPEG.

Other features promised by the standard include the capability to search for specific music tracks, and support for subcode channels that will make it possible to record multilingual information, as well as other data.

To do its part to contribute to the popularization of the CD-based karaoke system, JVC said it will release an industrial karaoke system and software by the end of the year — which will make it one of the first products to market and implement both video and audio MPEG compression.

VIDEOLOGIC AND IBM WORKING ON SOMETHING ‘BIG’

The computer industry seems to be spending more time developing alliances than developing new products. In keeping with this trend, IBM has formed a joint development agreement to design products with the international multimedia company Videologic.

Videologic is known in the PC market for its work with full-motion video compression and decompression schemes as well as its 24-bit graphics accelerator boards.

Although both companies are keeping product details to themselves for now, they are promising to jointly develop and manufacture low-cost, modular videographics and multimedia products for the IBM PS/2s and other PC platforms for both OS/2 and Windows.

According to Kirke Curtis, Videologic’s general manager, the first product will be an add-in card, due out this fall. But not just any add-in card, he emphasizes. “This is not some sort of multimedia sideshow where we are being contracted to make the next M/Motion board,” Curtis said. “This [partnership] is going to stretch out over the next couple years. The gravity of the agreement is big.”

We probably won’t know just how big until the fall Comdex show in mid-November when it is likely the two companies will outline their product strategy. We can speculate, however, that the first card will come equipped with a DSP (digital signal processor) chip — or some form of silicon — on-board, making it possible to write acceleration routines for specific software programs or for specific applications such as video and audio compression/decompression and graphics handling including redraw and rendering.

SuperMac and Storm Technologies are already making a splash in the Mac market with this type of technology. SuperMac’s ThunderStorm board, which began to be shipped during the Boston Macworld conference in August, provides acceleration specifically for Adobe Photoshop.

EUROPE WANTS FIBER; U.S. FIRMS DELIVER

July saw a significant advance in the fiber-optic telecommunication infrastructures of France and Germany. In two separate agreements, PictureTel Corp. and Raynet Corp. have been selected to supply videoconferencing services and fiber-in-the-loop (FITL) installations.

France Cable and Radio (FCR), a subsidiary of the French telephone giant France Telecom, has ordered 100 dial-up videoconferencing C3000 codecs from Danvers, MA-based PictureTel Corp. The ISDN-compatible equipment will replace an existing high-bandwidth (2-megabit-per-second) videoconferencing network service.

The C-3000 codecs convert analog voice and video into digital code (and vice versa), allowing compression and decompression of the video and voice. The codecs will enable France Telecom to provide its customers with national and international video calls using the French Numeris (ISDN) digital network at 128 kilobits per second.

Another European communications heavyweight, Deutsche Bundespost (DBP) Telekom, is laying the groundwork for a fiber-optic telecommunications infrastructure in Germany. Menlo Park, CA-based Raynet, through its German subsidiary, Raynet GmbH, as well as Siemens, SEL (a unit of Alcatel) and PKI/ANT (a consortium led by Philips), have been selected for the first phase of fiber installation to approximately 200,000 households.

Raynet will install its LOC-2i FITL system to deliver telephone and optional cable TV service to approximately 48,500 households. Initial service will reach the eastern German cities of Brandenburg, Dresden-Cotta, Gera, Grevesmuehlen and Hoyerswerda.

Installation is slated to begin in early 1993 with all systems fully operational by December 1993. Second and third phase installations are planned for 1994 and 1995 and will bring the installation total in Germany to approximately 1.2 million active units.

KODAK’S PHOTOCD PLAYER GOES TO RETAIL

As promised by Kodak, PhotoCD players reached retail outlets by mid-1992. DOW Stereo/Video in San Diego, CA, began retail of the units, priced at $379 for a basic unit and $499 for an enhanced version, on July 30. Several additional retail outlets –– Nobody Beats the Whiz in New York, Lechemere outside of Boston, and Best Buys in Minneapolis –– will start selling the systems at comparable prices by mid- to late August.

Kodak is hoping consumers will be lured to the system by its capability to store one hundred 35mm photographic images on a PhotoCD and display these images on a television set. PhotoCD also supports the interleaving of audio, text and graphics, allowing a rudimentary amount of consumer editing of images with words, sound and graphics (see Vol. 1, No. 5, p. 18).

Two versions of the unit are being offered. The basic system includes a PhotoCD player, a remote control and a sample PhotoCD disc. The deluxe version also has a “2× tele” feature to enlarge screen images to twice their original size and an “expanded favorite picture selection” to store individual picture edits and selected viewing orders.

It’s too early to tell whether consumers will go for Kodak’s new technology. However, PhotoCD has already stirred interest in many corners of the business world, where customers like MCI were sold on PhotoCD’s ability to scan and play back large amounts of information economically on a single write-once CD-ROM (see Vol. 1, No. 8, p. 20).

With a recession in full swing, however, even Kodak’s relatively low retail list price and elegant technology might mean a bit of a wait for enthusiastic acceptance from the masses.

INTEL GOES FOR HAND-HELD WITH VLSI

Intel Corp., the world’s largest maker of microprocessors, and VLSI Technology Inc. of Milpitas, CA, have shaken hands on a deal that will give form to chips for building Intel-based, hand-held computers — what Apple calls personal digital assistants and others have called personal information appliances and picocomputers. The Intel-VLSI chips, which are due in the second half of 1993, will be compatible with Intel’s current installed base of 100 million X86-based personal computers.

Why the interest in hand-held devices? A big potential market, according to the market researchers. SRI International of Menlo Park, CA, predicts the market for hand-held computers will grow to 17 million units per year by 1995.

Under the agreement, Intel is licensing its Intel ‘386 SL microprocessor core. VLSI will combine the Intel core with its library of personal computer Functional System Blocks (FSB) to create application-specific and customer-specific chips used in creating hand-held devices. Although the companies have not said what form the devices will take, they did say the communications-oriented devices will offer multiple interfaces, including pen, voice, mouse and keyboard-based input.

“An important use for hand-held systems will be to give users access to computer-based information anytime and anywhere,” said Andrew Grove, Intel president and CEO. “Therefore data and functional compatibility with the approximately 100 million personal computers based on the Intel X86 architecture will be essential.”

Grove also said that developers who have made software investments in the Intel architecture won’t be left out in the cold. “Much of this investment in tools and code can be easily re-used for the hand-held system environment.”

At the same time, Intel announced that it will acquire about $50 million (less than 20 percent) of VLSI common stock as part of a minority investment in the company. VLSI will market the chips for Intel, as well as manufacture, market and sell companion devices directly. “We realized that we needed the help of a company with VLSI’s customization capabilities in order to offer what our customers wanted,” Grove said. “We are making a substantial investment in VLSI to help provide the capital to take full advantage of the opportunities in this market segment.”

TV ANSWER AND SYNTELLECT TRY TO KICK-START INTERACTIVE TV

Hoping to kick-start the market for interactive television, Syntellect Inc. and TV Answer Inc. announced a new product development and marketing alliance in July that will combine their services to leverage off their customer bases and give rise to a new two-way TV system.

The deal creates Syntellect Answer Module, which will connect TV Answer’s interactive TV network with Syntellect’s interactive voice response (IVR) system. The Syntellect Answer System will be jointly marketed by the two companies, with all service and support activities managed by Syntellect.

The catch is that the two have not yet announced pricing or availability of the service. While Syntellect’s system is already installed at 6,000 customer sites, including banks, insurance companies, government agencies and educational institutions, TV Answer is still awaiting Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approval. If FCC approval is granted as expected by the end of this year, its consumer service will not be up and running until mid-1993.

TV Answer is a wireless, two-way TV service. Like the cellular telephone network system, TV Answer uses radio waves to transmit signals via satellite between consumers and service providers. In addition to shopping, TV Answer lets you play along with game shows and sporting events, participate in news polls and interactive advertising, and do your banking over the tube. TV Answer already has deals with national direct marketing firms including JC Penny; 800 Flowers; CheckFree, a leading provider of electronic payment services; and Bose Music Express. The deals involve offering their products and services via the two-way transmission medium.

What Syntellect brings to the partnership is its installed base of 6,000 users who already receive interactive verbal feedback to their questions. Syntellect’s IVR system allows users, for example, to get bank account status information by calling an automated telephone attendant. Syntellect’s IVR system queries the service providers database, in this case a bank, and converts the information into a verbal response.

The new Syntellect Answer Module will combine TV Answer’s interactive system with a modified version of Syntellect’s INFOBOT IVR line of products. By working with TV Answer, Syntellect will be able to provide consumers with visual access to database information. If you ask to access personal bank data, for instance, the system will display that information on your TV screen.

Behind the scenes, your request is converted into a digital radio signal and beamed via satellite to the service provider. The TV Answer system handles the two-way transmission, while Syntellect’s technology will serve as the go-between for TV Answer and the service providers, managing the request for information from the service providers database and presenting it back to TV Answer to deliver to you.

How successful will such a system be? That depends in large part on whether TV Answer, with its partner Hewlett-Packard Co., is able to sell the 1.5 million units — what it calls interactive television appliances (ITAs) — that it anticipates during the first year of TV Answer’s service.

PCS PROJECT JOINS BELL LABS AND CABLELABS

As reported in past issues, CableLabs — the research clearinghouse for the cable TV industry — has been busy pooling a broad range of technical talents to explore new opportunities in the cable television system (see Vol. 1, Nos. 7, 8 and 11). In late June, AT&T Bell Labs and Arthur D. Little, Inc., signed contracts to conduct research into personal communication services (PCS) for CableLabs.

The project is examining the strengths of cable as a PCS transport medium, studying various aspects of personal communication technologies; determining the feasibility of integrating such services with existing cable offerings, such as pay-per-view; and analyzing the revenue-generating potential for a system integrating these services.

Bell Labs is working with CableLabs in cable field trials, providing information and technical counsel. Wireless communication is among the technologies of Bell Labs that are being explored.

Arthur D. Little, an international management and technology consulting firm, will be involved in all aspects of the project. It will furnish the analytical portion of the project. CableLabs member companies will receive their progress reports as well as a final report.

VIRTUAL REALITY AS VIDEOCONFERENCE

Virtual reality is moving out of the buzzword realm and into (dare we say it?) reality, as it’s embraced in an upcoming videoconference sponsored by the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE). Virtual reality and other computer aids as training tools will be explored in “Emerging Technologies: Will Your Company Be Ready?” to be broadcast on September 30.

The broadcast is designed to give electrical engineers, technical managers, students and other experts working in the field a boost in visualizing the workplace of the future.

Leo Young, of the Office of the Director of Defense Research and Engineering in the Pentagon, will lead the discussion. Young’s past work has included the development of the 1989, 1990 and 1991 Defense Critical Technologies Plans.

Young will be joined by three expert researchers. Richard Newton, from the University of California at Berkeley, will present his latest work on the application of computer modeling to the design of microelectronic circuits beyond today’s state-of-the-art custom chips.

Eugene Meieran, of Intel’s Manufacturing Systems Technology Group in Chandler, AZ, will discuss the use of computer-assisted manufacturing processes in the context of overall factory design and operation.

Michael Moshell, director of Visual Systems Laboratory at the Institute for Simulation and Training, University of Central Florida in Orlando, will present examples of computer-assisted visual applications, including interactive virtual reality. His presentation will examine the application of visualization technologies to testing real and theoretical capabilities, new doctrines in worldwide “war gaming,” or architecturally analogous civilian scenarios.

The videoconference, featuring one-way video and two-way audio, will be broadcast from 9 am to 12 noon Pacific time. IEEE estimates 150 to 200 sites will register for the event with 10 to 20 participants at each site. Site registration ranges from $50 per person for universities to $60 to $100 per person for corporations. Contact Judy Brady at (908) 562-3991 or fax (908) 981-8062.

>I/O
>READERS RESPOND
INET ‘92 MEETS IN JAPAN
This could be the start of something big

Larry Press is contributing editor for Communications of the ACM, the journal for the Association of Computing Machinery.

I have had an Internet account since 1974, and during most of that time it was fun, but of somewhat limited value. However, in the last two or three years the Internet has become an indispensable part of my professional life; it is increasingly where I work, and meet with, and meet new, colleagues. This change is due to the explosive growth of the Internet from the four-node Arpanet in 1969 to an estimated 727,000 hosts in January 1992 (see Vol. 1, No. 11, p. 19).

I am not alone in moving my office to the Internet cyberspace, and in recognition of this growing phenomenon, the newly formed Internet Society held its first open conference, INET ‘92, in Kobe, Japan, June 15–18, 1992. I attended that meeting and will summarize it here.

A NEW SOCIETY FORMED IN THE ETHER

Vint Cerf, Internet Society president (and one of the designers of the TCP/IP protocol upon which the Internet is based), called the meeting “historic,” and I am inclined to agree. This was the first open meeting of what I believe will become an important global organization.

The Internet Architecture Board (IAB), which has overseen the development and standardization of Internet technology, was merged into the Internet Society. The society is in the process of establishing a cooperative relationship with the International Telecommunications Union, which effects a link between the IAB and the International Telegraph and Telephone Consultative Committee (CCITT). The goal is to put Internet standards on a par with other international standards.

Cerf predicts rapid growth for both the Society and the Internet. His predictions for the Internet in the year 2000 are shown below:

The first column of predictions for 2000 is for conventional desktop and portable systems. The second column (2000*) includes ubiquitous embedded computers such as those described by Mark Weiser in “The Computer for the 21st Century,” published in the September 1991 Scientific American.

Society membership is open to users, networking professionals and organizations. If users join in large numbers, it might evolve into something like the Internet’s answer to the Automobile Association of America, a giant organization that provides various types of support services — from free maps to road service — to its membership.

TRACKING REGIONAL, GLOBAL ISSUES

The conference was headed by Hideo Aiso of Keio University and Larry Landweber of the University of Wisconsin. Program chairman was Haruhuisa Ishida of the University of Tokyo. Professor Ishida fielded a four-track program.

The first track consisted of status reports on regional networks, covering Africa and the Middle East, Latin America and the Caribbean, Asia and the Pacific, Eastern Europe, Europe, North America, and Japan. These sessions gave one a sense of the global reach of the Internet, and of its heterogeneity.

The difficult issues. The second track was on network policy. This included discussion about difficult issues such as the technical and administrative feasibility of sustaining explosive growth, privacy and security (is privacy guaranteed, or can someone, perhaps in the government, see your mail?), and appropriate use. (The Internet was established for research and education. How should commercial traffic be treated?)

The problems in these areas are exacerbated by the global nature of the Internet, which means coexisting with many national governments. As many speakers mentioned, the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution — which guarantees freedom of speech — is a local ordinance.

Some technical proposals with policy implications were also presented. One was a description of Privacy Enhanced Mail, which provides optional encryption along with assurance that mail came from the indicated originator and was not altered in transit.

Network applications. The third track deals with applications. There were sessions on the role of libraries, networks and social change, about entry-level systems appropriate for lesser-developed nations, network management, computer-supported cooperative work, and distance education. While today’s impacts and applications are far reaching, they are only a taste of what we will see on tomorrow’s high-penetration, high-speed, commercialized Internet.

The fourth track was technical, with discussions of high-speed ATM (asynchronous transfer mode, the latest buzzword in high-bandwidth networking) switching, next-generation technology, network operations and measurement, addressing and flow control, and multimedia.

Notable presentations included a Virtual Internet Protocol for portable nodes (significantly, it was made by an engineer from Sony), and talk (no paper) by Dave Farber of the University of Pennsylvania. Farber pointed out that the latency of a gigabit network is comparable to secondary storage, and we might wish to foster a programmer’s view of the network as a directly addressable object store rather than an input/output “device.”

In other words, Farber is calling upon us to look at the Internet as though it’s one big disk drive. Because the network is so vast and powerful, we can store information anywhere, though it’s as accessible as if it were on our local hard disks. This radically changes our idea of what a computer is.

From a computer designer’s point of view, it allows for powerful, massively parallel computers, since computing elements can be accessed quickly from anywhere in the world. But it also should start us thinking about digital libraries of information that are truly global — the information is stored on computers all around the globe — but are easily and quickly available to users on their desktops. (See Vol. 1, No. 9, p. 7, on the WAIS Project, which subscribes to this point of view.)

UNEVEN GLOBAL DISTRIBUTION

While the Internet is growing rapidly, it is highly concentrated in developed nations. One source states that 129 of the 236 world political entities lack even E-mail connectivity.

Of course Internet access is unevenly distributed. For example, some Cuban and Malaysian school children enjoy better connectivity than those in Los Angeles inner-city schools. Since the communication infrastructure in developing nations is typically very poor, Internet connectivity for E-mail and data access is of great marginal value. As such, a major portion of the meeting was devoted to low-cost, appropriate technology networks for developing nations.

The conference was preceded by a two-day workshop and tutorial for developing nations. These were organized by Enzo Pullati of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), Steve Ruth of George Mason University and Stefano Trumpy of The National Research Council of Italy. Approximately 60 networkers attended, with financial support of the UNDP and the conference sponsors.

THE PRESENTATIONS

There were presentations on the following topics, and those who are interested (and who have access to Internet or E-mail gateways to the Internet) can send mail directly to the presenters for more information:

• Connectivity and telephone company options, Joe Choy: choy@ncar.ucar.edu
• The necessity for the networking community to be responsive to the needs of government agencies in developing nations, George Sadowsky: sadowsky@nyu.edu
• Communication infrastructure, hardware, software, people and applications for appropriate technology networks, Larry Press: lpress@venera.isi.edu
• The evolution of the Southern African regional network from FidoNet to uucp to Internet Protocol connectivity, Mike Lawrie: ccml@hippo.ru.ac.za
• The evolution of the Western European network from beginning 300 bps, dial-up uucp connections to its present state, Daniel Karrenberg: karrenberg@ripe.net
• PC-based routers with a live demonstration, Ted Hope: hope@huracan.cr
• Satelife, a low-orbit satellite-based system for delivery of medical data and E-mail, Jonathan Metzger: pnsatellife@igc.org
• Internet services, Art St. George, stgeorge@unmb.bitnet.

SHARED ENTHUSIASM AND MISSION

In addition to the workshop and tutorial, networks in developing nations were featured in conference sessions on regional networks. The workshop attendees also established a mailing list and an archive for documents on low-cost networking, and an anthology of papers is under preparation. (The archive is in the Internet directory global_nets, available via anonymous ftp at dhvx20.csudh.edu.)

INET ‘92 was an outstanding conference. The papers and presentations were of high quality; we had terrific food and a room full of Internet-connected workstations (what more could an Internaut ask for?); and there was strong sense of shared enthusiasm and mission. As the song says, it could be the start of something big.

For further information, contact The Internet Society at 1895 Preston White Drive, Suite 100; Reston, VA 22091; phone (703) 620-8990, fax (703) 620-0913, Internet: isoc@nri.reston.va.us.

Larry Press

>EVENTS
THE WESTERN SHOW
Dec. 2–4, Anaheim, CA
California Cable Television Assn.
(510) 428-2225

During the past two decades, cable television has played a significant role in the transformation of information consumption in the United States.

But others are catching on, and as networks become “the network” — as they become interoperable and all-inclusive — the cable industry is being forced into an increasingly hostile and complex marketplace.

On the 25th anniversary of The Western Show, one of the cable industry’s foremost gathering spots, top executives from Turner Broadcasting Network, Showtime Networks, American Movie Classics, The Discovery Channel, Times Mirror Cable Television Association, other major cable networks and cable industry associates will address how cable operators and programmers can manage their businesses and plan for the future.

A major drive of The Western Show is to establish a forum for a diversity of voices to exchange ideas and strategies.

More than 10,000 cable industry professionals from 48 states and 18 countries are expected to attend.

Discussion topics will include the impact of multiplexing on pay television, the potential market for interactive programming, the marketing of new networks, the role of fiber and the new technologies in rebuilds, and the bottomline effect of re-regulation.

Keynote speeches will be given by TV commentator Linda Ellerbee, and perhaps even Turner Broadcasting Network’s Ted Turner and TCI president John Malone.

The show will feature 24 panel sessions, exhibits from more than 300 companies and a new multimedia center with demonstrations by Apple Computer and Fluent Machines, a Massachusetts-based video networking company.

The California Cable Television Association (CCTA) represents more than 350 cable television companies in California. CCTA is active in areas of policy, regulatory matters, legislative actions and membership services.

Amy Johns

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