UCSD-TV and SD Telecom Council Team on New Program about Telecommunications

Telecom Today anchor Barbara Bry interviews Larry Smarr about Calit² research on "last mile" and other telecom issues. 6:25 [View]

A new TV program about the telecommunications industry premiered this month on UCSD-TV. Sponsored by the San Diego Telecom Council, "Telecom Today" will also begin airing in October nationwide on UC-TV. The first episode is devoted to wireless solutions to the 'last mile' high-speed Internet access problem. The university-run station is set to produce six half-hour programs over the next year, hosted by Telecom Council president Marco Thompson, and Barbara Bry, founder of the Athena program of UCSD CONNECT.

Each program will air eight to ten times over a two-month period. They will reach about 1.2 million homes in San Diego, and another 7 million homes nationwide when they are re-broadcast on sister station UC-TV (most of them on the EchoStar DISH satellite network). "We will focus on issues and technologies in the telecommunications industry," said Bry. "The goal is to position San Diego as the world's center for telecom innovation before a local and national broadcast audience."

The premiere September edition of Telecom Today will focus on what San Diego companies are doing to come up with wireless solutions to the roadblock many consumers and businesses face when they try to sign up for high-speed Internet access via cable modem or DSL line. The program will feature a panel discussion with three local telecom executives:

• Larry Prior, chief marketing officer of Lightpointe, which focuses on free-space optics;
• Jim Gandolfi, senior vice president at Hughes Network Systems, which has invested in the DirecWay satellite service to solve the problem on a nationwide scale; and
• Aaron Bennett, sales vice president at Alvarion, which sells equipment to phone and cable companies so they can reach customers who are too distant for it to be economical to extend the fiber or DSL lines.