Applications of Future Braod-Band Services in the Office and Home

The demand for broad-band services in connection with numerous applications in the business and private sectors will be economically met in the future by the broad-band ISDN, the internationally standardized universal network for all services. Broad-band services and their applications can be roughly divided into four types of communication. The "dialogue" services include video telephony, video conferencing, and high-speed document and data transmission. "Retrieval" services cover film retrieval, broad-band videotex, document retrieval, high-definition image retrieval, and retrieval of graphics, text, and data. One representative of "access" services is cabletext. Of the "distribution" services, television is the most prominent. The demand for broad-band services in the office will depend primarily upon cost-effectiveness, and in the home will depend primarily upon anticipated benefits, cost, available purchasing power, and leisure time. In either case, prestige considerations may also play a part. The sine qua non for the fast spread of new broad-band services will at all events be-in addition to acceptable terminal equipment-low user charges.