A new net

In addition to the Tele-immersion project and other high-end applications, Internet2 and Janet are, and soon Geant will be, playing host to a multitude of less glamourous but more pervasive projects.

A few days ago, primary teachers, psychologists and public school administrators participated in a virtual panel discussion between the University of Tel Aviv, Queen's University in Belfast, Texas A&M Health Sciences Center in Houston, and West Chester University in Pennsylvania. The topic focused on stress, trauma, and continuing the educational process, and how to help students and teachers cope with the world crisis.

Educators benefited from the experience of world-class psychologists through high-speed videoconferencing - something that would have been impossible two years ago. These people would never have been able to tap into this kind of a resource via the commercial internet.

As the Internet2 connectors continue to extend into rural areas, such events will become commonplace. It is another facet of the service that brings the extraordinary into the daily lives of the public.
Greg Palmer
University of Pennsylvania
gpalmer@magpi.net

Bundle of joy

Tony Evans might have been horrified to find that his new Ford came with "bundled" wheels, engine and stereo.

However, he was free to replace the stereo with a minidisc player, put on alloys or a nice, shiny gear knob, and sell the originals without risk of prosecution. He was able to test-drive it, and compare it with similar models from the same (and other) manufacturers. After purchase he didn't merely have a licence for him (and him alone) to drive it on roads specified by Ford, using petrol produced by Ford, in the car still owned by Ford. He would have been obliged to honour such a contract after signifying agreement by opening the car door.

Now that would have been an abuse of monopoly.
Paul Mooney
pmooney2@ntlworld.com

Last chance?

Guy Kewney's article (A dream dies, Online, November 8) correctly identifies the LEO range as a lost chance to extend British dominance in mainframes. But not the last chance. That was thrown away by the ICL management around 1972 with their decision to wind down the ICT 1900 range and build new hardware - the 2900 - and develop a new operating system eventually called VME.

VME took 10 years to reach commercial levels of reliability and performance - time ICL did not have. The late 70s and early 80s saw an accelerating haemorrhage of customers away from ICL.

The eventual success was too late, the fatal Fujitsu embrace leading inevitably to a full takeover. But it is unfair to blame ICL management alone. The merger forced by Tony Benn in 1968 between ICT and EELM was foolish.

Left to the market, ICT could have flourished and EELM, with its System 4 (an IBM/RCA rip-off) and poor sales, would deservedly died. Without Tony Benn's intervention we might still have a British mainframe computer industry today.
Dick Jukes
rjukes@globalnet.co.uk

· Thank you for Guy Kewney's piece "on the 50th anniversary of the first commercial mainframe."

We are generally not very good as a nation in exploiting our inventions or celebrating our successes. So, it was refreshing that on this very special occasion, the City of London took the lead. The Jubilee conference (Nov 5 and 6) was opened by the Lord Mayor, and participants came from all over the world. LEO needed much more than the resources of an off-shoot of a catering company to hold its own as the technology burgeoned year by year. With imaginative support from British industry and governments the results might have been very different.
David Caminer
Manager, LEO Systems
david@caminer.fsnet.co.uk

See the need

I am pleased Giles Heron and I agree (Feedback, November 8) on the need for videophone and reunification of the local loop. But he is the one not getting it on the rest.

I am talking about a need today for quality videophone services good enough for everyone to turn to. I have nothing against IP as the technology if it will do the job properly. But we can't rely on a laissez faire approach through the present set-up of impoverished telcos, battered ISPs, fragmented networks and confused customers.

The bulk of the population has neither the equipment nor the links. Only 39% of UK homes are on the internet and the number is declining; and the only broadband half of them have any prospect of getting is BT ADSL. None of the other local loop networks is configured for public service two-way broadband operation; and many of the high-speed internet access systems they support are contention-based and could never handle the traffic that countrywide videophone service would generate. We have no cheap customer cameras of sufficient quality; no standardised videophone interfaces; and so on. Unified management and technical direction is essential to create a nationwide capability.

The telecoms industry has allowed computing to seize the high ground of communication. The situation following September 11 imposes both an obligation and an opportunity on telecoms to counter attack.
John Harper
berry@pavilion.co.uk

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