FIRST LASER PHONE CALL ZIPS ACROSS THE ATLANTIC! ISAAC ASIMOV DEDICATES TAT-8; MAKES FIRST CALL
------------------------------------------------
A shark-proof undersea cable began carrying laser beam phone calls across the Atlantic Ocean Wednesday as the first leg of a network designed to revolutionize service on three continents.
AT&T, British Telecom and France Telecom, the three principal owners of the cable asked well known author Isaac Asimov to dedicate the new cable and place the first call.
In his remarks, Asimov said, "Welcome everyone to this historic trans-Atlantic crossing -- this maiden voyage across the sea on a beam of light..." He noted, "...our world has grown small, and this cable, which can carry 40,000 calls at one time is a sign of the voracious demand for communications today ... the clarity is in striking contrast to the crackling first telephone message from Alex Bell to his assistant Thomas A. Watson 113 years ago ..."
Mr. Asimov was the first speaker of several in a video conference in New York that was transmitted to Paris and London by the new cable.
The fiber-optic cable, which is thinner than a child's wrist, is able to handle double the capacity of all the trans-Atlantic copper-cable predecessors combined. It took seven years to design, build and install. The total cost was $361 million, but the people involved insist that in the long run, it will mean a continued decline in the price of overseas phone calls.
Ordinary television broadcasts will continue to be carried by satellite because they would take up too much room on TAT-8. But the cable will be used for video conferences on a regular basis between the United States and Europe, using a method to compress the signals and take up very little bandwidth.
American Telephone & Telegraph Company, which will operate TAT-8, said
1988 is the first year it will handle more than one billion international calls.Commenting on Asimov's remarks of '... a voracious demand for communications ...' an AT&T spokesperson noted that even this new cable will start running out of room late in 1991. The fourth quarter,
1991 is when a new fiber-optic cable with nearly double the new cable's capacity is scheduled to begin operation.Fiber-optic service to Japan and the far east will start in the second quarter of 1989 under the name PTAT, and fiber-optic links to the Caribbean and the Mediterranean will open in 1991 or 1992.
Lasers have revolutionized phone networks by making it possible to transmit information in the form of rapid pulses of laser light through hair thin strands of glass. The lasers transmit information in digital form coded into a series of ones and zeros. Most long distance calls within the United States are already carried on optic fibers.
Ownership of TAT-8 is as follows --
American Telephone and Telegraph, 34 percent British Telecommunications , 15.5 percent France Telecom , 10 percent
The remaining 40.5 percent is divided among 26 partners, some of whom own up to two percent interest; while others own less than one percent interest. The principal partners are --
Sprint Communications, MCI, Western Union and Northern Telecom.
Will overseas telephone rates go down in the next few years? AT&T says they will. The exact amount is anyone's guess, but a spokesperson from AT&T said " ... I think within a few years the rates will be *less than half* of what they are now ..."
Wednesday, December 14, 1988: An historic day in telecommunications history, and one I believe is only third to the invention of the telephone itself; the second most historic occasion being the completion of the cable which connected the east and west coasts of the United States in the early 1920's.
[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: While overseas phone call rates had begun to decrease by the middle 1980's they were _no where near_ as low in cost as they are today, in 2006. PAT]