INFORMATION HIGHWAYS ANNOUNCEMENT

Governer Jim Hunt

Today North Carolina takes a giant step forward into our future.

This Fall, North Carolina will link up the most advanced telecommunications network of its kind in the world -- a network that will ensure that the state will be a leader in the 21st century.

The network will reach into every corner of our great state. It will connect our cities with our towns, our schoolhouses and our courthouses, our hospitals and clinics -- our people all across the state.

Early in this century, North Carolina came to be known as the "Good Roads State." We discovered a new technology -- and started paving roads. Those roads began moving people and products in ways never before possible.

Today we reach out for a new technology -- a new kind of highway. The North Carolina Information Highway.

This is not a highway of concrete and cars -- but one of fibar optics -- and information traveling at the speed of light.

Here's the highway surface -- inside this cable are 35 tiny hair-thin fiber optic strands, each capable of transmitting the equivalent of 30,000 simultaneous conversations. This fiber can transmit video in two directions simultaneously -- without use of satellites! These strands can transmit digital data used by computers so fast that an entire encyclopedia could be transmitted in about the amount of time it takes to say the word "encyclopedia."

More importantly, it will help us improve education, create jobs, fight crime and make state government more efficient and effective.

Let me give you a few examples:

• a boy in Hyde County will be able to dial up a phone number and join in a class taught by live video over fiber optic lines by the best calculus teacher in the state.

• a woman in Cherokee County can consult with the top doctor in the field without having to travel to NC Memorial Hospital.

• one of the first questions companies ask us when they're considering locating in North Carolina is about our communications systems. Before Pepsi decided to locate a plant in Winston-Salem, they wanted to know about our fiber optic connections. This Information Highway will allow companies to network between various plant locations across the state, and link up with our community colleges and universities for training and retraining.

• it will help streamline our criminal justice system. Using fiber optic technology on the network, a man charged with a crime in Pender County can be arraigned from the jailhouse in Hampstead, without having a deputy travel across the county to see the judge.

• state government workers in Dare County can be more efficient by avoiding trips to Raleigh for training. Using the Information Highway, they can conduct their seminars over phone lines.

But we do have to invest in it. That's why I'm asking for $4.4 million in my capital budget to pay for technology at schools, medical centers, and universities across the state. Down the road, we imagine a network of 3300 locations all across the state. Our Good Roads State will become a Great Highways State!

We won't be working alone. The Information Highway will be part of a network designed, built and operated by the local phone companies of North Carolina -- a public private partnership for North Carolina's future. In the future other types of companies will be playing a key role: cable companies, broadcasters, computer imaging businesses, the people who sell customer premises equipment. But our purposes will remain the same: to improve education, create jobs, streamline our criminal justice system, improve productivity.

Labor Secretary Robert Reich puts it this way: "Brainpower, along with roads, airports, computers and fiber optic cables connecting it all up -- determines a nation's standard of living." We have the brainpower, the ground and air transportation, and the computer systems in place. Tonight we put it all together -- with our Highway to the future.