For more than a decade, telecommunications companies have spent billions of dollars installing the fiber-optic lines that pave the so-called information superhighway.

Kurt Scherf, a vice president at Parks Associates, a Dallas technology consultant, said it's hard to underestimate the impact of fiber optic's ability to transmit video. "The video angle is the one that the telcoms know they have to get into to compete," he said. "If you've got enough bandwidth, that opens up Internet video on demand," teleconferencing, interactive gaming and other services, he said.

And those are just the services everybody already knows about. Scherf and others point to the growth of paid music-downloading services, led by Apple Computer's popular iTunes, as an example of how higher-speed Internet connections can help create new services.

From the article "Verizon to lay out fiber plans for Keller" By Jim Faquay