PACBELL’S NEW VPS COMMIT TO FIBER NETWORK AND SERVICES
PacBell’s loss is big gain for Raynet: New VPs commit to fiber network and services

Within the past two months, Raynet Corp. of Menlo Park, California, has cherry-picked two savvy technologists from high atop the corporate tree at Pacific Bell to spur the installation of fiber-optic phone lines into the home.

Michael Bandler, former PacBell vice president of network technology, and Thomas Edrington, PacBell’s assistant vice president of science and technology, have joined Raynet in executive positions created especially for them.

Raynet, a subsidiary of Raychem Corp., is offering “fiber in the loop” systems at a price close to that of existing copper systems and is committed to becoming a major supplier of fiber-optic connections to public network companies. (“Fiber in the loop,” or FITL, is the fiber connection from a phone company’s central office into individual homes and businesses.)

By snagging Edrington and Bandler, both of whom are vocal advocates for modernizing the public network, Raynet is hoping to convince telephone companies nationwide to install fiber-optic telephone systems into residences and small businesses some time before the end of the millennium.

Diplomacy vs. warfare. Bandler, Raynet’s new executive VP, is a 30-year phone company veteran and corporate officer; he’d served as VP of network technology at Pacific Bell since 1982. He’s already busy lobbying the Bell companies to get off the dime and install fiber in the loop, and persuading politicos to take regulatory action toward smoothing their path. “We want them to install it now,” says Bandler.

Edrington’s job is trench warfare to Bandler’s diplomacy. As VP of customer service, he has to wrestle with customers who must be convinced of the absolute reliability of a fiber phone network. But his ability to convince them of its utility may prove equally vital.

A 24-year telecom veteran, Edrington established the first research and development group within Pacific Bell. Before he left for Raynet, he was director of all technology labs at PacBell. One was the Advanced Communications Laboratory (ACL) in San Ramon, California, site of many experimental fiber-based services created and tested by Edrington’s staff.

A dial-up library. One of the home applications being tested in ACL was “LiberNet,” a dial-up “library of the future” with fully integrated media capabilities, including full-motion video, sound and language translation, and fiber transmission of high-definition television (HDTV).

Another mind-boggler was a network application on two Sun workstations in different buildings connected via a fiber link. A demonstration showed the workstations simultaneously running a financial application while displaying full-motion video, stills and text.

At the same time, a live video link was left open between the two workstations without degrading the network’s operation. The two users could share an active, internal screen–the much-ballyhooed “electronic whiteboard” — which both could use to display and manipulate data in real time. “My bet is within three or four years, the way bandwidth is going, this technology will yield some very useful applications,” predicted Edrington.

Now that’s broadband. Most people understand that fiber is the perfect delivery vehicle for future media-intensive home applications such as interactive TV, dial-up video and audio, “virtual reality,” multiple-player video games and online information services because of its enormous capacity and speed. But few people appreciate how much bandwidth fiber really provides.

Light moving down an optical fiber was last clocked in the labs at 40 billion bits per second, but the theoretical limit is believed to be in the trillions-per-second range.

For perspective: an uncompressed HDTV signal moves at a comparatively puny 100 million bits per second. A math calculation or two makes it obvious that the capacity of an optical fiber phone line is limited only by the robustness of the electronics — i.e., the switches and splitters that pump and route the signals — on either end of the connection.

Attitude problem. Most long-distance lines and switching centers nationwide are already wired with fiber, and many large corporations are setting up private, fiber-based phone networks. But federal regulations on the cost of telephone services and legal restrictions from the divestiture of the Bell System in 1982 have stymied the installation of fiber to residences.

A significant, related factor is that 70 percent of the physical connections provided by phone companies — i.e., the “loop” into houses and small businesses — account for only 30 percent of their revenue. Telcos say this doesn’t give them sufficient financial incentive to take on the massive job of replacing copper with fiber — unless, of course, they are allowed also to sell the services they transmit over fiber, presently forbidden by the Justice Department’s 1982 divestiture ruling.

An overview of the attitudinal, competitive and regulatory roadblocks to deploying a fiber infrastructure is a subject for another issue of this newsletter. But for now, just as the consumer electronics industry is based on the de facto ceiling of “no gadget more than $1,000,” the telephone industry will not install fiber nationwide until fiber is at least as cheap as existing copper-wire systems, and until it is convinced there is money to be made on billable services to fill fiber’s enormous bandwidth.

- Denise Caruso