T/Mex--This may augur a paradigm shift>> Sprint plans landmark upgrade with multiple uses for
single line
Sprint Corp. is raising the stakes in the
telecommunications wars, offering its customers the chance to simultaneously talk
on the phone, receive faxes and connect with the Internet using a single phone
line.
The nation's third biggest long-distance phone company expects the new service
unveiled today will eliminate the need for customers to have multiple phone lines.
It said the new system would reduce its costs for delivering a typical voice phone
call by more than 70 percent and cut the costs of a video call to below what it
costs for a typical long-distance call today.
Sprint chairman William T. Esrey said customers' monthly bills would stay about
the same, but they would get far more sophisticated service - including Internet
connections at up to 100 times faster than a conventional modem.
Sprint's announcement said the new service results from a combination of
technological advances rather than a single technology and results from five years
of confidential work.
It expects to start making the service available to large businesses later this year
and expand it to businesses of all sizes by the middle of 1998. It should be
available to residential users in late 1999. Sprint hopes to make the new service
available in 36 major markets this year and a total of 60 markets next year.
"This truly is the Big Bang that expands the universe of what telecommunications
can do in our homes and businesses,'' Esrey said in a statement.
Sprint has already invested more than $2 billion in upgrading its network to
handle the new service, which it has been testing privately with business and
consumers for the past year, Esrey said.
It will need approval from local phone companies to hook its new service to local
phone systems. Negotiations could be difficult since Sprint says the new service
also will serve as its basis for competing with local phone companies.
The Wall Street Journal said Sprint also must persuade customers to pay $200
for a device that will act as a meter to measure monthly use of the system.
Cisco Systems is providing key hardware for what is being called the Integrated
On-Demand Network, with Bellcore providing the central software. Sprint will
sell the service through RadioShack, which already sells Sprint mobile telephone
service.
Several big companies have already committed to using the Sprint service
including Hallmark, Silicon Graphics, RadioShack parent Tandy and Ernst &
Young LLP, the announcement said.
Sprint, which trails AT&T Corp. and MCI Communications Corp. in the
long-distance business, is the first to announce a new telecommunications system
on such a large scale.
There have long been promises of full-service networks offering everything from
video on demand, electronic shopping and more. But telephone companies need
greater capacity and more efficient transmission technologies to send the huge
amount of data.
Carriers now use different transmission technologies for voice and data. And
keeping lines open for lengthy online use ties up circuits.
Experts said an integrated network is needed to combine voice, video and data
and pipe them over the same lines. |
