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Forbes
ASAP, December 7, 1992
The Coming of the Fibersphere
In
a world of dumb terminals and telephones, networks had to be smart. But
in a world of smart terminals, networks have to be dumb.
Philip Hope, divisional vice president for engineering systems of EDS,
has an IQ problem. His chief client and owner, General Motors, wants to
interconnect thousands of 3-D graphics and computer aided engineering
(CAE) workstations with mainframes and supercomputers at Headquarters,
with automated assembly equipment at factories in Lordstown, Indiana,
and Detroit, with other powerful processors at their technical center
in Warren, Michigan, with their Opel plant in Ruesselheim, Germany, and
with their design center outside San Diego. On behalf of another client,
Hope wants to link multimedia stations for remote diagnostics, X-ray analysis,
and pharmaceutical modeling in hospitals and universities across the country.
Any function involving 3-D graphics, CAE, supercomputer visualization,
lossless diagnostic imaging, and advanced medical simulations demands
large bandwidth or communications power. Graphics workstations often operate
screens with a million picture elements (pixels), and use progressive
scanning at 60 frames or images a second. Each pixel may entail 24 bits
of color. That adds up fast to billions of bits (gigabits) a second. And
that's for last year's technology in a computer industry that is doubling
its powers and cost effectiveness every year.
What Hope needs is bandwidth and connections. The leading bandwidth and
connections people have always been the telephone companies. But when
Hope goes to the telephone companies, they want to tell him about intelligence:
their Advanced Intelligent Network which will be coming on line over the
next decade or so and will solve all his problems. For now, they have
what they call DS-3 services available in many areas, operating T-3 lines
at 45 megabits (million bits) a second. These facilities are ample for
most computer uses and working together with several different Regional
Bell Operating Companies (RBOCs), Hope should be able to acquire these
services in time for a General Motors takeover by Toyota.
Hope has been through this before. In the early 1980s, he actually wanted
D-3 services. Then he was interconnecting facilities in Southeast, Michigan,
with plants in Indiana and Ohio. But Michigan Bell could not supply the
lines in time. EDS had to build a network of microwave towers to bear
the 45 megabit traffic. Later in the decade, the phone companies have
even offered him higher capacity fiber optic lines, with the requirement
that the optical bits be slowed down and run periodically through an electronic
interface so the telco could count the number of "equivalent channels"
being used.
What Hope and others in the systems integration business need is not intelligent
networks tomorrow but dumb bandwidth that they can deliver to their customers
flexibly, cheaply, and now. To prepare for future demand, they want the
network to use fiber optics. It so happens that America's telephone companies
have some two million miles of mostly unused fiber lines in the ground
today, kept as redundant capacity for future needs. Hope would like to
be able to tap into this "dark fiber" for his own customers.
As a leader in the rapidly expanding field of computer services, EDS epitomizes
the needs of an information economy. With a backlog of 22 billion dollars
in already contracted business, EDS is currently a seven billion dollar
company growing revenues at an annual rate of 15 percent, some three times
as fast as the phone companies. EDS will add a billion dollars or so in
new sales in 1992 alone. If the company is to continue to supply leading
edge services to its customers, it must command leading edge communications.
To EDS, that means dumb and dark networks.
The "Dark Fiber" Case
That need has driven EDS into an active role as an ex parte pleader in
Federal Case 911416, currently bogging down in the District of Columbia
Federal Court of Appeals as the so-called "dark fiber" case.
On the surface, the case, known as Southwestern Bell et al versus the
Federal Communications Commission and the U.S. Justice Department, pits
four Regional Bell telephone companies against the FCC. But the legal
maneuvers actually reflect a rising conflict between the Bells and several
large corporate clients over the future of communications.
Beyond all the legal posturing, the question at issue is whether fiber
networks should be dumb and dark, and cheap, the way EDS and other customers
like them. Or whether they should be bright and smart, and "strategically"
priced, the way the telephone companies want them.
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