Word: opticalness
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...users and keep track of the billing. Moreover, new technology has created the ability to translate all audio and video information into digital bits that can be sent over phone wires. Of course the Bells, like their cable-TV rivals, must upgrade their lines into combinations of fiber-optic and coaxial cable so they can transport in two directions the volume of films and other fare they hope to offer. And they must also play catch-up with cable when it comes to providing the entertainment...
...Southwestern Bell gearing up to provide two-way viewing over those systems, but next year it intends to offer telephone service over those same lines and thereby challenge local phone giant Bell Atlantic on its home ground. (Bell Atlantic is hardly snoozing; it is spending $11 billion for fiber-optic cables and other equipment to bring the information highway to 8 million homes by the year...
Even if the phone companies manage to procure enough high-quality programming, other handicaps could stall their drive toward two-way TV. Although they lead in the race to lay fiber-optic cable, much of it was originally installed to carry a high volume of phone traffic into cities and therefore does not connect to individual homes; instead, the fiber-optic trunk lines branch into twisted pairs of copper wires, which carry far less information directly to the customer. That means the companies must either replace this so-called last mile with fiber-optic cable or find...
That is at least in part why phone companies like Pacific Bell, which has already laid 350,000 miles of fiber-optic cable, are eagerly waiting to purchase a new generation of fast video "servers" that squeeze movies and other programming down to the right size and deliver them to customers virtually on demand. Hewlett-Packard and other manufacturers are scrambling to roll out such servers by next year at prices of up to $20 million...
...linked worldwide system, through a new firm called Iridium. While Iridium is designed for portable devices such as phones and hand-held computers, Teledesic is intended for fixed locations, such as offices. Both ventures will compete with the U.S. phone companies, which are busily laying cable for a fiber-optic system costing at least $100 billion that will carry video signals and data as well as voice communications. Both systems will also require a large number of satellites...