Directions for the information highway.

• Author: Lucky, Robert W.
• Position: Information Management

You won't find a map for the information highway yet, but the road signs are going up fast. If you want to stay ahead of the traffic, read on to get your bearings.

For centuries, the seven wonders of the world represented the zenith of human civilization. Today, the computer chip and our communications network are two of the great wonders of the modern world -- but, unlike the original seven, these aren't fixed in stone. As a matter of fact, we're now completely re-inventing the network we've spent the last century building. Translation: chaos.

What are some of the evolutionary forces emerging from this chaos and driving the network's development? Fiber optics is certainly one of the most powerful technologies we have. In just the last few years, it's increased our telecommunications capacity enormously. A single fiber today carries 2.5 billion bits per second. And the technological capacity to send more per fiber is doubling every year and will continue to do so for the next 15 years.

As we begin to digitize our communications network, the first problem is getting this capacity into homes and businesses. Getting it to large businesses is no problem because they buy their own fiber and put it in themselves. Small businesses and homes are another matter.

All told, we'll probably have to spend about $23 billion to fiberize the nation. That's a large investment, but not impossibly large. At the current rate of investment and production, fiberizing would take about 15 years, but it'll probably happen faster than that. What's more, we may end up wiring the nation's homes at least two and possibly three times. You don't need two fibers going into your home, but because the market, not a regulatory body, is running the show, everyone wants to get into the act -- the cable television industry, the telephone people and the entrepreneurs, not to mention the electric power utilities, which see a chance to get into the network business themselves.

So, one way or another, optical fibers will come to the home. Many different kinds of architectures are possible, but right now none of them has compelling advantages economically or technologically over another. That's why this process will develop gradually over the next six to 10 years, and the market will expend a great deal of energy to make sure it happens.

Of course, when you're talking about fiberizing the homes of America, the money's in entertainment. There's no argument about that, so the cable television and telephone industries will be gearing up to provide an entertainment infrastructure. In fact, Vice President Gore and his advisers see video for the home as one of the principal components of the national information infrastructure.

Another great theme in telecommunications is wireless mobility -- sort of the unwiring of America. This is another way of getting information into the home, and it's playing out much faster than anticipated. For example, we're quickly moving toward personal-communication systems. The idea is to have many small bay stations hanging on the sides of buildings and on telephone poles, so you're never more than 500 feet from a station. As you walk along, your wristwatch telephone talks to the nearest bay station. In essence, you have a personal-communications network, possibly centered around a mobile telephone number that follows you from place to place. Right now this concept doesn't have the broad-band capabilities of optical fibers, so...