Chapter 7 Imperative Issues in Implementing Broadband Network Technology (BNT) on The Information Superskyway

Abstract

Granted that the Information Superhighway is here, what are the nine imperative issues arising from the explosion of content? was the question we discussed in Chapter 6. Bill Gates puts the date of the Information Superskyway (as we prefer to call it) at least a decade away; and Michael Dertouzos, Director of MIT Computer Science Laboratory since 1974, deplores the decade that will be wasted. What are the Technology, Demand, and Supply Issues that drive/delay the Highway/Sky‐way? Technology Issue 1: Hardly anybody is working on Shared Conventions for interconnected machines to work together. Dertouzos warns: Major players of the 1990s who keep extolling fiber optics, real‐time video, virtual reality, multimedia, and electronic commerce will discover that none of these awesome stuff will be useful unless computers and software at diverse sites can “understand” one another. Supply Issue 1: Dertouzos' war of spiders is one in which 3C industry members each offer the customer a car to drive on the Highway so long as he(she) never drives another car or wheeled vehicle. Supply Issue 2: Dertouzos declares: “There is no true information infrastructure anywhere in the world today.” Everybody is busy putting up toll booths, but nobody is putting up the highway. Demand Issue 1: Europeans declare “Good roads create traffic.” Video on demand is too small to justify the massive investment necessary to connect just the US homes to the broadband network. Europeans urge the Economic Community to remove IT barriers. Demand Issue 2: American and European experts concur that customer and business applications are the driver. This concurrent emphasis on applications confirms the USE‐orientation: What do you USE the high‐speed, high‐capacity switched network for? which we raised as Issue 1 in Chapter 6. Demand Issue 3: In his keynote address to the Harvard Conference on Internet and Society, Intel Vice President McGeady blasted Digital Pundits (Al Gore, Nicholas Negroponte) for taking us down the wrong path of interactive television which would simply subject us to an avalanche of advertising… They all failed to realize that the information reformation is about personal information, not about the same old stuff turned into bits and delivered to your doorstep in a slightly new way. It's about creating on one's own. Technology Issue 2: Technologically, what is the promise; what is the bottleneck? Combining the advantages of two technologies ‐ optics and semiconductors ‐ holds the best promise of reliable, fast, and inexpensive storage and transfer, communication and computing.

Citation

(1997), "Chapter 7 Imperative Issues in Implementing Broadband Network Technology (BNT) on The Information Superskyway", Asia Pacific Journal of Marketing and Logistics, Vol. 9 No. 1/2, pp. 112-129. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb010284