IBM testing superfast Internet services
Wednesday, April 7, 1999
The Straits Times is also online – (http://www.straitstimes.com/)
ARMONK (New York) — International Business Machines Corp (IBM), the world’s No.1 computer maker, is setting up two projects to test new technology in the hope of making the Internet faster and better able to run video images.
Together with Ameritech Corp, Cisco Systems and Northwestern University, IBM will unveil plans today for a project split between Northwestern’s campus and IBM’s Schaumberg, Illinois-based branch. With the help of the Telematics Institute and SURFnet, IBM will open a similar site in the Netherlands.
The centres will experiment with new video applications on Internet technology that is 1,000 times faster than current World Wide Web speeds.
IBM has backed the move to an Internet unfettered by choppy video images and delays in downloading information, and the company has bet its future on developing computers, software and services aimed at companies running their businesses over the Internet.
“We need a better Internet structure than we have today,” said Mr Irving Wladawsky-Berger, general manager of IBM’s Internet division. With the new centres, “our No.1 objective is to experiment in the real world”. In the centres, IBM and its partners will also try to overcome other Internet bottlenecks.
Those roadblocks include the lack of a standard way to divide up the available space in a network for transmitting information, voice and video.
—-Bloomberg News
