Need for speed is no joke

Bell Atlantic Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Ray Smith recounted an anecdote about Vice President Al Gore at last week's Internet and Electronic Commerce show in New York. While visiting a school and community Internet access testbed in urban Union City, N.J., Gore asked parents how he could help them. One mother looked him in the eye and said, "I'll tell you what you can give us: speed.

The Internet, information technology and e-commerce industry audience laughed in appreciation at what the vice president must have thought. But they knew, as does anyone who has tried to download information at a rate of 14.4 kb/s, what she was talking about.

"Across the spectrum-from a man who could buy 10 T-1 lines to a woman who has just discovered an electronic information world-there is one aspect that is required to make the Internet work. We're going to have to bring speed to make it work," Smith told the audience.

Bell Atlantic and future partner Nynex are banking on the bandwidth they are building. While the core local, long-distance, and video services will be big money makers, the largest market of all is data connectivity, he said.

Smith called ISDN the "starter kit for speed" and alluded to a future switched broadband network with fiber to the curb and copper 52 Mb/s access to every home.