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B U S I N E S S |
by Lee
Leffler
October, '96
This fall, Fairfield's on-ramp to the information superhighway will get faster and cheaper. As part of its plan to wire the whole state with fiber-optic cable, Iowa Network Services (INS) will make high-capacity telecommunication lines available in Fairfield at deep discount prices.
Businesses in Fairfield are salivating at the possibilities. Videoconferencing, faster and cheaper corporate Internet connections, digital voice messaging, and high-tech fax services are just some of the services Iowa Network Services may offer through its fiber optic lines. Companies within Fairfield could also start selling their own high-tech services to the Fairfield community through the fiber-optic line.
Fiber-optic lines like this are usually available only in large cities. The new line in Fairfield will help our city of 10,000 attract more business, and give Fairfield's companies a competitive edge in telecommunications. Ultimately, the fiber-optic line should stimulate growth by attracting more businesses, reducing costs, and increasing global competitiveness.
Companies in Fairfield have been trying to convince telecommunication companies to install fiber-optic lines here for quite some time. Cities this size are slim pickings when large metropolises are profitable and numerous. INS is the first telecommunications company to recognize that installing a fiber-optic line in Fairfield could be profitable for all.
INS's cable will be accessible from a utility building at French Reneker Associates Inc., an engineering company on south Main Street.
What will the immediate impact be? The first organizations likely to benefit will be companies that need high-speed Internet access.
One interested company is LISCO, an Internet service provider in Fairfield. LISCO is negotiating with INS to hook up to the fiber-optic cable. It is also trying to resolve the technical details of actually accessing the fiber.
Other companies in Fairfield are keen to save money on their current high-speed Internet access. Some fast-growing companies already have their own high-speed connections to the Internet, which they need to host their own web pages, send e-mail and access remote computers. These companies will probably be able to hook up to INS's fiber-optic line at French Reneker in the south part of town at a lower cost.
As an example of how fiber optics might help local companies, consider a company like Human Factors International. Cheap fiber optics can help them increase business and reduce costs through videoconferencing. Right now, their software ergonomics consultants spend much of their time traveling to clients' sites, since only two of their numerous Fortune 500 clients are in Iowa. Video conferences could be held in place of most of the face-to-face meetings without reducing effectiveness or harming client relations. Human Factor's Don Langstaff predicts "less travel, less cost to clients, and less wear and tear on the consultants" as benefits in using videoconferencing. They might also experiment with videoconferencing their classes in software ergonomics, as well. And teaching more than one classroom at a time might be possible, reducing costs and bringing students together.
The fiber optic line could also bring Fairfield's telecommuters closer to the home office. Telecommuters, or office workers living far away from the home office of their parent company, usually have a great need for close contact with the home office and with clients. Cheaper videoconferencing and high-speed computer connections could improve productivity and attract more telecommuters to Fairfield.
Fiber-optic connections "would vastly improve my life" says Fairfield's Paul Lancaster. He is a software engineer for Symantec Corp., which is based in Cupertino, California. "I connect to my home office many times a day, uploading and downloading files. Internet connections would be faster, too. I'd be a big fan of fiber optics becomming available in Fairfield."
Jeffrey Hedquist, a world-class radio voice, has a hi-tech recording studio in Fairfield. Right now, though, to make a 10-minute live radio spot, he flies to a big city like Chicago and rents an expensive studio. Why? The big cities have fiber-optic connections that carry his voice to the radio stations. Hooked to INS's fiber-optic line, he would be able to compete on equal ground with the big city announcers.
This is not the first time that INS has brought Iowa into the big leagues. Giving Fairfield's businesses access to fiber-optic lines is part of INS's' plan to wire the whole state.
Iowa Network Services started in 1986 as a consortium of 128 independent local telephone companies in Iowa. After the FCC broke up AT&T's monopoly on long distance telephone service in 1982, many local phone companies upgraded their equipment so their customers would have equal access to all the long distance companies. The more people a local phone company served, the easier it was to justify the expense of upgrading the equipment. In Iowa, however, many rural phone companies could not afford to upgrade. Hence, they formed a corporation called Iowa Network Services (INS) and upgraded the equipment in a central location: Des Moines. Long distance calls are routed through the switching station in Des Moines and connected to the long distance company of the customer's choice.
This strategy changed the economics of how long-distance companies viewed the rural phone companies in Iowa. Rural customers typically do not get the kind of attention from long-distance companies that large city phone companies enjoy. The average length of cable required to reach a customer in a rural area is longer than in a densely-populated area, and equipment costs per customer are higher. With the INS fiber-optic network in place, though, long distance companies can pick up over 180,000 customers in one location.
Fiber optics can handle a lot more than phone calls, so INS is spending $5 million to install a fiber-optic route through southeastern Iowa. "The completion of this route will add to the already 1,500 miles of fiber optics that INS has deployed in the state" says their company literature. "All of INS's facilities are SONET technology which provides a 'self-healing' ring. This makes the network almost impervious to outages. The technology being deployed on this fiber-optic route will be capable of handling hundreds of thousands of calls simultaneously." Of course, fiber optics can also handle cable TV, Internet, videoconferencing, and Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN).
Iowa is no stranger to innovation in fiber optics. The state-owned Iowa Communications Network (ICN) has linked some of the state's governmental organizations, including schools, prisons, armories, state agencies, and hospitals, since 1989. "We've Seen the Future: It's in Iowa" was the title of a 1994 article on ICN in Newsweek. Videoconferencing through ICN has torn down some of the geographical barriers in education, law, and medicine. Internet access for all schools is one of the goals.
Commercial organizations, though, are not allowed to tap in to ICN. Iowa's companies need their own commercial network, which Iowa Network Services is bringing with its fiber-optic cable.
Fiber-optic cables are bundles of narrow glass tubes, each half the width of a human hair, through which laser light is turned on and off to transmit digital signals. They are fast and accurate.
Just how fast are fiber optics? Right now, the fastest Internet connection possible over a regular phone line is 28.8 kilobits per second. At that speed, the latest copy of Netscape, a popular Internet web browser, takes about two hours and eighteen minutes to get off the Internet. Compression and good copper lines can halve this time. Using fiber optics, an ISDN line transmits at 128 kilobits per second--a four-fold increase. Now the file takes about half an hour to get. And for heavy-duty traffic, a T1 bundles 24 ISDN lines for speeds of 1500 kilobits per second--fifty times as fast. At these speeds, the file downloads in about three seconds.
No wonder Fairfield is eager to get wired with fiber optics. This new technology will level the playing field for Fairfield's communication-oriented businesses and spur economic growth. More and more Fairfield businesses will become global corporations in a small-town setting.
