Pacific Bell Completes Fiber-Optic Data System : Communications: The five-year, $250-million effort makes speed-of-light transmission possible for businesses countywide.
Orange County has gained some more on-ramps to the information highway.
Pacific Bell announced Monday that it has completed a five-year, $250-million project that encompasses the county’s largest business centers with 17 fiber-optic “rings”--from which companies can plug into the communications technology of the future.
By 2015, Pacific Bell hopes to have linked all of its Orange County customers--both business and residential--with fiber-optic routes. Eventually, the hair-thin fiber strands, which use laser light signals to send huge quantities of information, will replace the bulkier and less efficient copper wire that now runs through most telephone lines.
Access to a fiber-optic pipeline has become a must to maintaining a healthy business community, said Timothy Cooley, president of Partnership 2010, a coalition of business, government and education leaders in Orange County.
“I’m not sure that in and of itself it would be a draw for businesses moving to Orange County,” Cooley said, “but not having a fiber-optic network would be a detriment in attracting and keeping companies here.”
A fiber-optic network holds numerous advantages for businesses. It allows voice, visual and data information to be transmitted simultaneously over the same line. Its self-correcting feature--which rebounds to a clear path for information hindered by static or other interference--makes errors practically impossible.
Also, it transmits information at the speed of light. Sent over copper wire by a standard modem, the 43 million-word Encyclopedia Britannica would take 50 hours to transmit. Fiber optics could zip the tome over telephone lines in two seconds.
Already, about 100 Orange County companies--including health-care and aerospace firms--are hooked into fiber-optic rings completed in recent years.
Pacific Bell, which serves most of California, is in the process of modernizing all of its metropolitan-area systems. Because Orange County emerged as a business center only in the past decade, the conversion to fiber optics has been a smoother process here than in Los Angeles and San Francisco, said William Powers, an area vice president in Pacific Bell’s Anaheim office.
“In Orange County, we’re still building our infrastructure,” Powers said. “The Irvine Spectrum was a bean field just a few years ago. It’s easier to start fresh than to replace old facilities.”
Many businesses here will ignore the information highway’s new ramps, reached only by additional roadwork to connect a company with its nearest fiber-optic ring. Dry cleaners and convenience stores, for example, generally have little need to send a letter-quality facsimile in seconds.
But fiber optics allow hospitals to transmit patient data and X-ray information quickly and accurately. Fiber optics, too, could open new doors in home health care by permitting on-line monitoring of a patient’s blood pressure or pulse.
Over the next four years, Pacific Bell plans to spend another $90 million on fiber optic rings in Orange and Riverside counties, the company said.
Across Orange County, Pacific Bell also has replaced copper cables with fiber optic wires linking its 30 processing offices--the stations that relay a telephone call to its destination.
Pacific Bell’s attention to Southern California puts the region “a half-step ahead of the pack,” said John Eger, director of the International Center for Communications at San Diego State University. “It’s good for business, good for consumers and good for Southern California.”
Telephone companies have run into massive competition from cable-TV companies fighting over a slice of the fiber-optic pie. Pacific Bell has a head start in Orange County, but joint ventures soon will become the way of life, Eger said.
“Smart money says that major providers of the infrastructure are going to come together,” he said. “The cost is so enormous that no one can do it alone.”
Pac Bell Expands Fiber-Optic Network
Pacific Bell is launching the second phase of its plan to overhaul Orange County’s telecommunications network into one of the most sophisticated communications superhighways in the nation.
Phase I
Network of 17 fiber-optic “rings” constructed around the county’s largest business centers. Fiber optics will replace copper telephone cables linking more than 30 Pacific Bell call-processing centers in Orange County and the Inland Empire.
* Cost: $250 million.
* Completed: October, 1993.
Phase II
Rings in Santa Ana and Irvine Spectrum will be upgraded. New rings will be built to serve portions of Orange, Tustin, Costa Mesa, Newport Beach, Corona del Mar and Riverside. All of Pacific Bell’s electronic call-processing switches will be upgraded with digital technology.
* Cost: $90 million.
* Expected completion: 1997, with long-range plans extending into 2015.
HOW FIBER OPTIC DIFFERS FROM COPPER CABLE
Fiber optic
* Means of transmission: Light pulses traveling through hair-thin strands of glass.
* Size: Three-quarters of an inch cable carries 48 pairs of protected fibers. Replaces 54 copper cables.
* Capacity: 744,444 conversations on each cable.
Copper
* Means of transmission: Electrical impulses
* Size: Three-inch-thick wire carries 600 pairs of copper wires.
* Capacity: 14,400 conversations on each cable.
HOW FIBER OPTIC WORKS
* Conversion: Phone conversations and computer data are converted by an optical transmitter to a series of light pulses.
* Laser transmission: Light pulses are sent through glass fiber by a laser flashing on and off at very high speeds.
* Reconversion: At the receiving end, a light-sensitive receiver changes light back to electric pulses.
WHY IT IS BETTER
* Less expensive: Light can travel farther than electrical impulses before a costly amplifier is needed to boost the signal.
* Better quality: Unaffected by electrical or radio interference or lightning.
* Higher capacity: More data can be transmitted over fewer cables.
* Parallel routes: If cables are accidentally severed, the signal is automatically sent along a back-up route.
WHAT IT CAN DO
* Physician conferring with a specialist hundreds of miles away can transmit a patient’s X-rays accurately in 10 to 15 seconds.
* Businesses with branch offices can confer by video conference, cutting down on commuting time.
* A real estate agent wanting to help a family relocate could show homes in another city by computer, complete with color images.
Source: Pacific Bell; Researched by JANICE L. JONES / Los Angeles Times
