Intelligent Terminals for New Communication Services.

Computing and communication technologies have converged rapidly. Continuing reductions in the cost of integrated circuits favor information processing at communication terminals. Advanced data terminals, "intelligent telephones," and the use of television sets as data display devices should be economically attractive by 1980, but changes will be evolutionary to maintain compatibility with existing telephone and television equipment. Regulatory and political issues will act to delay the diffusion of intelligent terminals and other new communication technologies. These issues include setting technical standards, defining regulatory boundaries between communications and information processing, encouraging or restricting competition for terminal equipment, privacy considerations, and threatened shifts of economic or political power among individuals and institutions. Consequently, although intelligent terminals will be technically and economically feasible by 1980, it may be closer to the year 2000 before the entertainment, instructional, and information services they make possible will be widely used by telephone and cable TV subscribers. (Prepared for presentation at the National Telecommunications Conference, New Orleans, December 1975.) 13 pp. Ref.