Because of a soaring budget, unavailable technology and an inability to compromise, the plug was pulled on the proposed $6 million NYNEX-Dartmouth Learning Network project.
NYNEX, New England Telephone and Dartmouth were working to provide an interactive data, voice and video network that would allow five Upper Valley high schools, the Howe Library, the Montshire Museum of Science and the College to all share educational resources.
According to Erle Pierce, staff director of planning for NYNEX, after only a year, NYNEX realized it had under-estimated the time frame on the software development and watched the price tag for the information network balloon to about $18 million.
ATM, which stands for asynchronous transaction mode, is a switch mechanism that allows people to converse over the telephone. NYNEX was planning to incorporate this existing switch mechanism with new digital software so students and teachers at different schools could participate in real-time voice, video and text interaction.
"At the end of year one of a three-year project, we had to decide if the cost issue and availability could live up to our projections," Pierce said.
Pierce said the vendor, Fujitiso, could not deliver on schedule the new technology required for the project to proceed and NYNEX foresaw longer delays as costly.
The project was proceeding until September 1993, at which point NYNEX went to the local schools and Dartmouth separately to say the corporation would have to scale down the original proposal, Pierce explained. He said NYNEX wanted to develop an alternative plan that would achieve similar goals and cost less.
But as proposals went back and forth between the Upper Valley schools through Dartmouth and NYNEX, the budget shrank, as did the technology.
Stated in NYNEX's press release, the educational group gave a counter proposal for $3.5 million, asking for software and data services which would allow them to access Dartmouth's information system. Pierce said the reason this proposal was rejected was because it did not allow for any new developments in technology.
"In that proposal we saw something we already had in the Vermont Net," Pierce explained, describing the presence of an on-line data service with a toll-free number allowing access to the educational resources such as the Vermont State Library. "As a business, we had to ask why spend money on something there was already software for," he said.
NYNEX then went back to Dartmouth with a plan to install a video-data network that would connect the schools to the College. NYNEX said it would provide the service for a year for free on the condition the schools would pay the next two years, Pierce said. NYNEX's proposal also included funds for Dartmouth to develop software.
The proposal was rejected by the schools and the project was officially deserted at the beginning of last month.
Pierce said NYNEX is disappointed with the failure of the Learning-Network to materialize because of the information the company would gain.
Skip Bean, associate principal and chair of the project for Hanover High said what happened did so without discussion.
Larry Levine, director of computing at the College, said he did not fully understand NYNEX's final decision to back out as well.
The idea of having access to educational resources such as courses and activities from other schools was appealing because of the isolation of an Upper Valley education, Bean said.
"We were interested [in the project] in the general sense it would develop technology for a new style of learning." he said. "Having access to information rapidly was the main attraction. Easy communication over a computer network would make planning easier."
Bean, who said he is "cynical" of the affair, felt it was not appropriate for NYNEX to expect the public schools to go ahead with an experimental project and pay for it as well. He said initially the project would have proceeded without the schools having to pay.
While Bean felt there was no communication during the multiple stages of the proposals, Pierce saw the move of the schools to have a single representative as detrimental to the process.
Pierce said does not think NYNEX ended the project without making every effort to provide some improved services for the high schools because of the relationship between the company and the Upper Valley.
"We felt we owed the schools something for the work they did," he said, "It was not any one thing, we just decided not to proceed with the issue."
Bean was frustrated by the time and energy invested by the members of the academic community in producing ideas that would have benefited from the new network.
"Our biggest commodity is time," Bean said, "with all the promises, we thought at one point they were going to do the things they proposed."
While each side cites the cost of the project in relation to the technology and services offered as the major reasons for the conclusion of the association, Levine said NYNEX had not spent anything.
"NYNEX will tell you they installed fiber-optic lines, but that didn't cost them anything because they would have done that anyway. Dartmouth didn't spent any concrete money and the schools basically only did some renovating," Levine said.
Levine said there is nothing in the works at present for a similar project, and working with NYNEX again is possible.
