Information society : agenda for action in the UK : report / Select Committee on Science and Technology.
- Great Britain. Parliament. House of Lords. Science and Technology Committee.
- Date:
- 1996
Licence: Open Government Licence
Credit: Information society : agenda for action in the UK : report / Select Committee on Science and Technology. Source: Wellcome Collection.
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![services and applications (e.g. access to the Internet) is a major problem, and the data transmission rates that are generally available over standard (twisted pair) telephone lines make downloading of pictures and video slow or impractical during much of the day. A wider use of optical fibres and copper-based links with digital compression technology could alleviate some of these problems. At the high bandwidth end of the spectrum in the United Kingdom, nearly 90 sites (mostly universities) are now linked to a greatly enhanced version of the Joint Academic Network (JANET) known as ‘Super-JANET’, and it is anticipated that all universities in the United Kingdom will be connected to this network over the next three years. Super-JANET uses optical fibres and state of the art digital switching technology to offer two services: a34 MBit/s service for text and data with limited video and voice capability, and a service being up-graded to 155 MBit/s (and possibly to 2,480 MBit’s in the future) for carrying real-time interactive video and voice traffic in addition to text, data and images. Six institutions in Edinburgh have already taken the lead in developing a ‘Metropolitan Area Network’ to link all their sites across the city, and give them access to Super-JANET. There are also plans to extend the network to local schools, colleges, libraries and the national museums of Scotland.' 1.19 The Department of Health recently announced that it had awarded major contracts to British Telecommunications (BT) and Mercury to provide the health service with its own dedicated broadband superhighway. The network would be fully interconnected allowing traffic between General Practitioners, hospitals, dentists, and Health Service Authorities etc. within and across regions. Access would also be possible to news and bulletin boards, national and international databases, central libraries, the Prescription Pricing Authority, and the Central Register. Similar ‘intranets’ are now also being installed by many companies and Government Departments.” 1.20 Separate from the academic and sector-specific superhighways are networks currently being laid for domestic use, principally by cable companies. These networks use a hybrid of all three cable transmission media: typically optical fibre from the cable company to local distribution nodes, coaxial cable into the home and, in many cases, a traditional copper cable providing a telephone service. As discussed in the previous section this telephone link can also be used for a narrow band return signal to the cable company. Broadband return communications are not yet available,’ but if public demand for high quality video-telephones increased then this would almost certainly change. 1.21 The most extensive fibre optic networks in the United Kingdom belong to the telecommunications companies. In addition, ISDN connections have been made to over 8,000 business premises, but the cost of the terminal electronics, which until recently was high, has made the take-up rate of ISDN connections to the home much lower in the UK than is the case in Germany, for example. Because of telecommunications regulations set out in 1991, BT and the other national telephone operators are restricted in the services they can offer: they cannot convey broadcast entertainment until at least 1998, when the situation may be reviewed; and they cannot provide their own broadcast entertainment services (e.g. video on demand) until at least 2001. From April 1994, however, the national public telephone operators (including BT and Mercury) have been allowed to own cable TV franchises. A Command Paper on ‘Creating the Superhighways of the Future’* said: “If these companies bid successfully for new LDO [Local Delivery Operator] licences, the Government will also be prepared to issue these companies with Telecommunications Act licences which enable them to supply entertainment services within the franchise areas”. ' Times Higher Education Supplement, 10 March 1995. In the USA, however, the Committee heard that companies would rather use the Internet for long-distance network use instead of installing their own networks - and thus adequate encryption was required to make the Internet secure (see Appendix 8). Two-way broadband communication trials are underway in the United Kingdom and the Sub-Committee visited what claims to be the world’s largest public trial of the technology in Cambridge, England. See Appendix 7 for minutes of the visit. “Creating the Superhighways of the Future: Developing Broadband Communications in the UK’ Cm 2734 November 1994. 2 3](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b32218643_0012.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
