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From...

Sprint unveils high-bandwidth Net access

June 3, 1998
Web posted at: 2:30 p.m. EDT

by Kristi Essick and Marc Ferranti

(IDG) -- On Tuesday, Sprint unveiled plans for a large-scale network redesign that the company said will offer homes and businesses high-bandwidth connections over single existing telephone lines for simultaneous voice, data, and video calls.

Dubbed FastBreak, the new network has already cost Sprint $2 billion over the last two years and will be partially operational by year-end, the company announced.

Sprint said the network's infrastructure is based on asynchronous transfer mode technology, fiber-optic lines, high-speed switches and routers (mostly from Cisco Systems), and Sprint's own patent-pending technology.

The idea is that a single line will be able to simultaneously accommodate voice calls and packets of data sent over the Internet.

FastBreak will break traffic into packets, sending them over many different routes and recombining them at the destination.

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"This truly is the Big Bang that expands the universe of what telecommunications can do in our homes and businesses," said William T. Esrey, Sprint's chairman and chief executive officer, in prepared remarks released before a news conference here.

The network is the result of five years of work, which Sprint was apparently able to keep from public scrutiny.

"We saw where the trends were pointing and quietly began designing the network of the future. We've invested more than $2 billion in building the network that will handle the advances we're announcing today, and numerous worldwide Sprint patents have either been granted or are pending," Esrey said.

Customers will have one big pipe--into their office or home--that is always on and can handle Internet access and voice calls at the same time, Sprint confirmed. The company will bill users for the number of digital bits that pass over the network, not the number of minutes the person is connected to the network. However, users will have to pay to have a box installed that measures the digital bits used per month.

The FastBreak network, which Sprint calls an integrated on-demand network or ION, will let users access the Internet at speeds up to 100 times faster than traditional modems. Because users would pay only for what data they send, FastBreak would be cheaper than leasing a line they might not always use to full capacity.

While FastBreak is not an upgrade of Sprint's existing network, it will be able to communicate with older telecommunications networks. Sprint will have to seek cooperation from local phone companies, which must provide Sprint access to their customers so that Sprint can link FastBreak directly to existing lines. It is likely that the company will seek to put FastBreak switches in local switching centers, thereby bypassing traditional interconnect agreements.

Sprint plans to roll out the service in stages: to large corporations by the end of 1998, to all businesses by mid-1999, and to consumers by late 1999. Prices have not yet been determined.

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