Grabbing a lane on the Information superhighway

摘要

Players from the telecommunications, cable, and even entertainment industries are scrambling for position as the possibilities for a nationwide electronic communications network come more sharply into focus. The information superhighway, as this network has been termed, would allow connections and two-way information exchange between virtually all the households and businesses in the country. Tying into such a system would open up a number of new services for electric utilities, from providing.electronic meter reading, billing, and payment to offering customers increased control over their own energy use patterns. But EPRI believes that utilities should consider a more aggressive involvement in the information revolution, adding fiber-optic cable to their already far-reaching power delivery infrastructure and partnering with other investors to take an ownership role in the systems now being developed. The results of a new EPRI study provide an in-depth analysis of the business opportunities and risks associated with different levels of involvement in the National Information Infrastructure and provide an analytical framework utilities can use in planning their own strategies.