This will be a network of networks … A lot of things you see today will all be a part of a quilt … [Over] the next three to five years, cable and phone companies will start running fiber-optic lines to “nodes,” which are something like electronic way stations serving small areas or neighborhoods. That will start pushing fiber closer to individual homes and make the networks more powerful and flexible. Fiber will be run to big users, such as businesses, that will have their own nodes. Still the rest of the quilt is going to take a lot of time and money to complete. The price tag easily could be $100 billion to $200 billion
Predictor: Kay, Ken
Prediction, in context:In a 1993 article for USA Today, Kevin Maney offers up information about the development of the Internet, interviewing Ken Kay of the Computer Systems Policy Project. Maney writes: ”In private industry, cable and phone companies already are pushing ahead and spending their own money on the beginnings of fiber networks. The companies know they need fiber optics to compete in the future … ‘This will be a network of networks,’ says Ken Kay, executive director of Computer Systems Policy Project, a consortium of major computer companies. ‘A lot of things you see today will all be a part of a quilt.’ … [Over] the next three to five years, cable and phone companies will start running fiber-optic lines to ‘nodes,’ which are something like electronic way stations serving small areas or neighborhoods. That will start pushing fiber closer to individual homes and make the networks more powerful and flexible. Fiber will be run to big users, such as businesses, that will have their own nodes. Still the rest of the quilt is going to take a lot of time and money to complete. The price tag easily could be $100 billion to $200 billion … ‘There is no blueprint that says, “Attach wire A to wire K,”‘ Kay says. ‘What we need now is an agreement on a vision, a research agenda and initial discussion of public-policy issues.'”
Date of prediction: February 1, 1993
Topic of prediction: Information Infrastructure
Subtopic: Cost/Pricing
Name of publication: USA Today
Title, headline, chapter name: A New Superhighway: Fiber Optics to Break Open the Data Bank
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
Money, Page B1
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Anderson, Janna Quitney