wspaper publishers, quite concerned (Carnevalle, 1991). The existing telephone system in the United States, however, is not prepared for the task of providing a telecommunications infrastructure for the future. "The telephone system's limitations stem from its century long dedication to a very specific task transmitting human voice to human ears" (Dertouzos, 1991, p. 31). Human speech produces sound which vibrate at approximately 4,000 cycles per second. The human ear captures and decodes sounds at this transmission rate, and the telephone system is designed to accommodate this transmission rate. Computers seeking information, however, have a wide range of transmission rate requirements. Depending upon the application, transmission rates from a few hundred cycles per second (text transmission) to a few million cycles per second (scientific weather forecasting) may be required (Dertouzos, 1991). One solution to the transmission flexibility problem is the use of fiber optics (Kessler Marketing Intelligence, 1991). One relatively thin
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