[ Want speed? Look for an ADSL Internet line ]
High-speed link goes fast enough to change how you think about work
Monday, April 27, 1998
By Ken Zapinski, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
Imagine that during the day, you could zip around town in your car at 60 mph. But after 5 p.m. and on weekends, you were slowed to a crawl, forced to drive no faster than 2 mph.
That is the dilemma faced by most Americans wired into cyberspace.
At the office and at school, we enjoy wonderful high-speed connections to the Internet or corporate networks. We zap e-mail and download files at lightning speeds. But at home, we must rely on pokey, telephone-dialing modems that can deliver a tiny fraction of the performance we're used to.
Well, buckle up. Pittsburgh is about to get a lot faster.
Bell Atlantic Corp. is wrapping up a test here of technology that promises to make the ordinary copper telephone wires to your house nearly as fast as a standard commercial-grade fiber-optic link. And the computers can remain hooked into the Internet around the clock because the phone line can carry voice and data traffic at the same time.
If the technology, known as ADSL or asymmetric digital subscriber line, delivers on its promise, it could have a profound impact on how we work, play and learn. And Pittsburghers will be among the first to find out. Bell Atlantic will begin offering the service commercially later this year, with this market as one of its initial targets.....
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