HAWAII INC'S

Network News The Newsletter of the Information Industry in Hawaii

UNIY£RSJTY OF HAWAU LJB.RABt'

Volume 1, Number 5

Hawaii's Network Could Serve as Model for Nation, Says Kimmelman

e forts to create a publicly 1\0 run telecommunications e to serve the state's people is

very exciting" idea from which the rest of the country can learn, according to Gene Kimmelman, legislative director for the Consumer Federation of America.

The Hawaii model "has great potential to collaborate with the consumer view," Kimmelman told conferees at HINTS-4. The state can and should provide information about its programs, adding to the body of research on ways to reach people, the cost, the applications that are valuable to the public, the needs and wants of consumers. Hawaii's information network and services "could be a test­bed for the nation," said Kimmelman, noting that the state's program is "light years ahead" of others.

Kimmelman contrasted "the telephone companies' intoxicating vision of a right-now one-wire world of voice, data, and video" all billed to the consumer, wLth a consumer­oriented "individualized approach" in which customers buy only those services they want. He said his organization is promoting an entrepreneurial, low-cost, user­directed "middle way" using narrow band ISDN, unbundled services, and slow incremental development of public switched networks for a wide variety of uses. Hawaii's experience can provide valuable information toward the development of this idea, he said . ...

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Three tracks of presentations and demonstrations of online services

in the "How To" room kept registrants busy.

Information Age Requires Vigilance: Allen eIJ; n " senior vice president for

go nt affairs with the Infor-1$<\ io hli ustry Association, opened HINTS-4 with a warning to conferees that the American people need to be vigilant in the continued protection of America's traditional freedom of access to information.

"The rules of the Information Age will affect your ability to use information," he said, nojing that technology is changing the ways people acquire information and that the changes could affect some of the basic princi­ples which have shaped U.S. infor­mation policy up to now: the First Amendment right to access informa­tion and the historic American

Ken Allen.

restrictions on government's ability to control information.

Allen cited six areas in which public policy issues relevant to the Information Age are emerging: ownership, infrastructure, privacy, access, sources, and regulation. Ownership issues relate to copyright procedures, which Allen said have provided a major incentive to creation of new information products and services in the past; among his concerns are changes in copyright laws that might give the states or federal government the ability to control access to certain types of information.

Issues in the infrastructure arena include how it should be created, how fast, and by whom; and the issue of who pays the costs. Allen cited the emerging National Research and Education Network as an example of a future infrastructure that raises questions about what its uses should be, who the users should be, and who makes the rules.

Privacy issues include those dealing with access to credit information, the rights of caller versus called in the

area of caller identification services, and the implications in international privacy agreements. Access issues include questions about commercial use, the sale of government information, and the improvement of public access to governmental information. Source issues deal with the potential entry of the regional Bell operating companies into the information business, among others. With regard to regulation, Allen cited questions about Dial-a-Porn, audiotex, and digital telephony and dwelt on the possible ramifications to information access stemming out of a bill imposing charges and regulations on access to the FMC/ ATFI system. That bill suggests "the data police may be just around the corner," according to Allen.

All of the issues, said Allen, impact both users and information providers. Users could face the potential of reduced sources of information, reduced diversity of data, changes in delivery method, restriction of use, increased cost, and less privacy. For providers, changes in the basic rules could affect content, terms and conditions of sale, accuracy, ownership, competition, methods of delivery, and marketing. In summary, the Information Age, according to Allen, is "in turmoil," dealing with an increasing multiplicity of decision makers and effects on basic rights and freedoms. The impacts of decisions being made now will be felt economically, politically, and socially. of

Hearing-impaired students talking about the HI Connect program were among the presenters at HINTS-4.

Bossert Takes a Look at Educational Challenges in a Multi-Media World

Ten More Join Up As part of HINTS-4, HA WAIl INC Executive Director Arthur Koga announced the addition of Seven new organizations and agencies that will soon be on­line with Hawaii FYI and three others considering roles as service providers. The latest to join the network: SMS Info, Budget Rent-a-Car, Honolulu Chamber of Commerce, Rexis (entertainment services), MTL (bus schedules), Department of Business, Economic Develop­ment and Tourism (bulletin board), and the Office of Infor­mation Practices (records access). Waiting in the wings:

o~m timedia all the way, Dr. p . os ert grabbed the attention of

e 4 audience with an opening that featured his reading of a poem by William Butler Yeats to the accompaniment of a video by Madonna. The presentation quickly and clearly made the point: if you want to be seen or heard as a teacher these days, you have to be competing with the "loud, exciting, highly sen­sual" world that is much more likely to command a student's attention.

Bossert, who is assistant superinten­dent and head of the Office of Information and Technology Services at the Department of Education, went on to cite some statistics: people today get 50 percent of their information from video or graphic input, 20 percent from audio sources, 15 percent from conversation, and only 10 percent from text sources. But teachers don't have and can't afford the equipment, the power sources, the wiring, to "get with it." Bossert's bottom line: "Pay for it now or a hundred times over later on."

The limited technology available in Hawaii schools is already "old technology," he said, pointing out that at the current 30-1 student-computer ratio, the state has the lowest terminal access in the nation, far from the recommended ratio of 5-1. Schools are served by "minimal telephone connections" and while 95 percent of the state's classrooms are wired for TV, 25 percent have to be rewired to receive cable. And information delivery systems such as facsimile are minimal to non-existent.

But the department is working on a series of programs to improve delivery of information to both students and employees, Bossert reported. A teleschool distance learning project is experimenting with delivering courses in subjects for which a school has no trained teacher.

There is a pilot program utilizing videotex technology, and the popular YO RAPS program that ties students together in informal communications. The department also has plans to open a "school of the future" in Mililani Mauka on Oahu, making use of notebook computers and a wireless LAN and experimenting with auto­mated records management, an auto reservation system for videotapes, and new video distribution strategies. Work is also progressing in updating financial information management, a networked school information system, library automation, and cafeteria information.

In a later session, Bossert observed that a principal objective of education has to continue to be teaching people to communicate. Citing Socrates' battle to keep writing out of the schools for fear that the alphabet would destroy people's ability to think, Bossert said today's society is "in another watershed" in which

Department of Hawaiian Home­lands, CTL Communications, and Minitel Services Company.

communication methods are changing and a culture based on the written word is falling apart. The world needs a new "grammar of graphics" to facilitate its continuing ,ability to communicate, he said. ...

Almost as valuable as the presentations

and online demonstrations was the person­

to-person networking that

went on at HINTS4.

State's Will Be First Private Synchronous Optical Ring Network ormington, director of

for Fujitsu Network Trans­ssion Systems, Inc., told lun­

cheon guests at HINTS-4 that Hawaii is "on the threshold of taking yet another bold and pro­gressive step for the future," the deployment of "the first private synchronous optical ring network in the U .S."

The state already has access to fiber, he pointed out, saying that its Information and Communication Services division has been working on intra-island fiber networking for several years. The division has now selected SONET as its network protocol and looks to deploy SONET equipment this year-two years ahead of the rest of the industry.

Normington said he has been impressed with the leadership and vision of Hawaii's leaders in developing a state-wide network,

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forming HAW All INC, committing to a videotex service for the benefit of the state, and presenting the HINTS conference.

The new network will keep the state at

Normington.

the forefront of communications technology, with the capability to develop enhanced multi-megabit and multimedia ser­vices that are "just around the corner."

He described SONET (an acronym for Synchronous Optical Network) as a new standard for transmission, designed to take advantage of the fiber medium as well as advances in microprocessor based telecommunication systems. The protocol, he said, is designed to encourage interoperability among vendors, encourage communication

between devices, and provide network services such as perfor­mance monitoring and automatic network protection.

Looking to the future, Normington said new multi-megabit and multimedia applications will "push today's networks to the limit" and predicted the need for a "network image of the future" that includes a high speed switch with a new high speed packetized protocol. "That switch and proto­col is A TM, Asynchronous Trans­fer Mode," he said. "New broad­band switches and other devices will soon support ATM over SONET. Just as dedicated T-l is giving way to a more efficient fast packet, Frame Relay over primary rate ISDN, so will SONET begin to be the pipe that will carry ATM fast packets at SONET rates. This is broadband ISDN. And it's coming." ...

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