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residential customers.15 They further opined that it would be a
number of years before it was economically justifiable for NITCO
even to consider seriously investing in the technology to provide
broadband switch services over fiber lines to its business and
residential customers. They noted that during 1987 through 1989,
NITCO had few, if any, business customers who would demand such
services.
Petitioners offered the expert witness opinion of Warren A.
Liss. Mr. Liss has extensive experience in the
telecommunications industry. He has held a variety of management
positions involving the design and development of telephone
switching hardware and software, telephone networks, and
telecommunications services. He worked for over 20 years at Bell
Labs and then was employed as a director of advanced systems
engineering at MCI Telecommunications. Since 1987, he has worked
as a consultant to various local, long distance, and
international telephone service companies.
Mr. Liss was of the opinion that the wideband switch
services now currently offered to certain businesses, hospitals,
schools, and other institutions, would inevitably migrate to
residential applications. He noted that the FCC's recent "Video
15According to Drs. Jackson and Rohlfs, during 1987 through
1989, experts in their field were predicting that, in the
telephone service industry as a whole, by the end of the century
there would be a 10-to-20 percent penetration of fiber optic
technology into the "copper loop" that connects customers to
telephone company networks.
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