US West. Here is the 2nd of two articles in our paper in the last week. This was on page one of the local section in large caps. Mon 5/4/98 www.sltrib.com
Internet Service Speeds, Improves Connections
BY GUY BOULTON
THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE
A bigger and faster connection to the Internet -- much-promised and long-awaited -- will soon be available along the Wasatch Front.
US WEST on Wednesday will introduce a nascent technology that increases the speed limit of the fastest residential connection to the Internet nearly fivefold. And it uses standard copper phone wires that run to almost every home in the nation.
The technology enables a standard telephone line to handle up to 256,000 pieces of data a second. The fastest computer modems in personal computers can move 56,000 pieces of data a second.
Faster versions of the technology allow speeds of up to 7 million pieces of data -- or bytes -- a second.
The technology can do all this while still keeping the telephone line free for plain old telephone service. In other words, you can surf the World Wide Web and still get a telephone call from the neighbor down the street. ''It really does turbo-charge your telephone service,'' said Duane Cooke, a US WEST spokesman.
The technology moves the Internet a bit closer to its full potential and starts the race between telephone and cable companies to provide faster connections to the Internet. Both have long promised new technologies that would lessen the irksome delays when ownloading or sending documents and pictures over the Internet. The new service is based on a version of a new technology called ADSL -- every new technology, after all, needs an arcane acronym -- for Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line. The hookup fee for the typical residence will be about $150, and the basic service will costabout $40 a month.
The installation fee will be waived for the first 1,000 customers in Utah. A faster version of the service designed for telecommuters and small businesses can move 512,000 bytes of information a second. That's nine times more than the fastest modems on personal computers can handle. The monthly charges will be about $65 a month.
A byte is the smallest unit of data stored on a computer.
Larger businesses can buy connections that can move 768,000 to 7 million bytes a second. Those services will cost from $80 to $840 a month. All this means it may be only a matter of time before the digiterati are bragging about the size of their Internet connections instead of the speed of their computers. The service also eliminates the point-and-click steps of dialing up a connection to an Internet
service provider. ''You turn your computer on and it's there,'' Cooke said. US WEST is not releasing specific projections, but it expects thousands of customers to sign
up for the new service by the end of the year, said Kevin Taylor, US WEST's general manager for local markets in Utah.
The company also expects Internet service providers, which now must pay for hundreds of standard phone lines, to push the service.
The technology -- developed by Intel, Compaq and Microsoft -- basically splits a standard telephone line into separate pipelines for voice and data. ''This is clearly the technology of the future,'' said Cooke. Cable companies, such as TCI Cablevision of Utah Inc., also plan to offer a faster connection
to the Internet through the coaxial cables connected to residences. The Salt Lake Tribune is a
wholly owned subsidiary of Telecommunications, Inc., the parent company of TCI Cablevision.
''Customers are going to have a choice,'' Cooke said.
But the cable companies must upgrade their systems before they can provide the service. And,
for now, US WEST has the head start.
The new service initially will be offered in Salt Lake City, Bountiful, Clearfield, Farmington,
Kaysville, Kearns, Holladay, Murray, Orem and Provo.
Not all customers in those cities will be able to subscribe to the service. Generally, a customer
must be within three miles of a central office. And some of those central offices are not equipped
with the needed technology.
The condition of the line to the central office -- such as the number of splices or gauge of the
wire -- is another factor. But Cooke said, ''This is cutting edge technology. It only promises to
get better as time goes on.''
US WEST hopes eventually to offer the service statewide.
So far, the company has invested close to $100 million in its 14-state region on the new
service -- and it's at the forefront of the Baby Bells in introducing the service. By the end of May,
the service will be available in 20 cities from Tucson, Ariz., to Minneapolis.
''We chose to go with it and grow with it,'' said Taylor, the Utah general manager for local
markets.
There are other advantages for US WEST. The technology increases the capacity of US
WEST's network by separating conversations between computers from conversations between
people. The average telephone call lasts three to four minutes; the average computer connection
lasts 25 to 30 minutes.
''The voice network was never designed for that kind of load,'' Cooke said.
Local telephone companies soon expect to be moving more computer data than telephone
conversations over their networks. Much of that data is sent in small bunches -- think of each
click on the ''next page'' icon while surfing the Internet -- that uses only a fraction of the
network's capacity. Yet the connection still ties up a telephone line.
ADSL technology basically creates a different pipeline and uses that pipeline more efficiently.
It also suggests the Baby Bell's venerable copper wires, running to nearly every residence in
the country, can be modified to provide a faster and better connection to the Internet.
''A lot of people think copper is outdated,'' Cooke said. ''And obviously it is not.''
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