Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, August 26, 1993 TAG: 9308260181
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MICHAEL STOWE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG LENGTH: Long
Utter those words around Virginia Tech's campus and officials likely will bombard you with technical mumbo jumbo that has become synonymous with the project since it was proposed in January 1992.
Words and phrases like Ethernet and Internet, fiber distributed data interface, megabits per second, data superhighways, critical mass and IntegratedServices Digital Network.
Whoosh. It's enough to make a person's head spin.
An average Joe might discount the plan to make Blacksburg the first town in the nation to be linked by personal computer as just another confusing university research project.
Andrew Cohill, director of development for the Blacksburg Electronic Village, wants to dispel that notion about this project, which will use high-speed circuits and fiber-optic cables to tie Blacksburg's homes, businesses, government offices and Virginia Tech together.
"The Electronic Village is about people talking to people, just like on the telephone," he said. "The technology isn't that important to me. It's not a technology issue, it's a society issue."
He likes to focus on the fact that Blacksburg residents soon will be able to send a letter to the mayor by computer, order a book after browsing through the store's computer inventory, and pay bills and do banking with their computers.
After more than 15 months of planning, laying fiber-optic cable, wiring homes and developing software, the joint project among Virginia Tech, Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Co. and Blacksburg will be introduced to the public this fall.
During the next year, features will be added that will allow citizens to check their children's homework by computer, look at restaurant menus, renew prescriptions over electronic mail and talk about their health with physicians who can be hard to reach over the telephone.
"The opportunities are virtually endless," said Earving Blythe, vice president of information systems at Tech. "We literally give you the world."
But project coordinators agree that the project's success depends on whether residents can and want to use the electronic services.
"It's a market test," said Don Reid, project manager for C&P, which has invested $6 million in the the project. "If we don't have realistic results in the first two phases, then it could take a while for phase three to get started."
The Electronic Village will be free at first, Reid said, but eventually the phone company will charge customers a monthly fee. The bottom line, he said, is that the company eventually has to find a way to make money with it.
Cohill and Joseph Wiencko, project manager for the Electronic Village, have been two of the main players in developing and testing the computer software that will make the project work.
Both are quick to point out that the project still is in its early stages and bugs will need to be worked out during the first few months of operation.
"This is not like a construction project," Blythe said. "It's not exactly known in the greatest detail which services are going to succeed. It's just a huge test bed."
Even so, Cohill said, it's important that the services work efficiently from Day One.
"If people have a lot of problems at first, then they are just going to walk away and not try again," he said.
Virginia Tech was one of the first universities in the nation to rig its campus with fiber-optic cables, which allow information to travel faster and in much greater volume than standard telephone lines.
Faculty members have had access to Internet since the mid-1980s.
The idea for the Electronic Village was hatched when Tech researchers began trying to figure out "how we could open this information world to the broader community," Blythe said.
That's where C&P entered the picture.
After a six-month feasibility study, the phone company agreed to invest in the project and use Blacksburg as a prototype to create electronic villages in other communities.
C&P Telephone has laid 42 miles of fiber-optic cable and installed a digital electronic switching center at its Blacksburg office.
"So far, we have more than met our expectations with this project," Reid said.
Town Manager Ron Secrist said Blacksburg believes the Electronic Village will be an important economic development tool.
"It will remove any illusion that Blacksburg or Southwest Virginia might be isolated from the mainstream," he said.
There are tentative plans for the Blacksburg Electronic Village office to be located in the town's public library on Draper Road. Three or four personal computers at the library will be linked to the Electronic Village.
Cohill hopes that Blacksburg residents soon will think of the Electronic Village as a necessity, like a telephone, and not a luxury.
Residents will need a computer to use the Electronic Village, but it doesn't have to be top of the line, high-tech equipment, Cohill said.
"You can go down to Sears and buy a computer for $999 and make this work," he said. "It will run on a 10-year-old IBM."
by CNB