Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News
Sep. 26--Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua announced yesterday that fiber-optic cable is being installed to link Roman Catholic schools and offices throughout the five-county Archdiocese of Philadelphia.
"Today, we take another step on the road to success by merging our schools onto the world's `information superhighway,'" Cardinal Bevilacqua said.
The telecommunication network, which will take three years to complete, will go first to the 22 diocesan high schools, with a combined enrollment of 23,100 students. Seven of them already are connected to high-speed Internet access, and the rest will be added to the network by spring, the cardinal said.
Cardinal Bevilacqua said the network then will be extended to Catholic social-service facilities, St. Charles Borromeo Seminary, other archdiocesan offices, and all 287 parishes.
"This school year, the Archdiocese of Philadelphia becomes the first diocese in the country to create a comprehensive diocesan-wide fiber-optic network," he said.
The estimated $1.5 million cost of installing the infrastructure for the network is being born by PECO Hyperion, a venture of PECO Energy Co. and the Adelphia Communications Corp. Hyperion unit.
In return, the archdiocese will use PECO Hyperion as its telephone-service provider. The company has assured the archdiocese that the switch will result in substantial savings on telephone costs and provide upgraded digital phone service.
"The arrangement is that we switch our dial-tone services to PECO Hyperion, and they will do the front-end of wiring and construction of the fiber," said Brother Joseph Willard, assistant to the vicar for administration. "They also guarantee us a reduction, across the board, of approximately 30 percent of [the cost of] our dial-tone service."
Peter K. Murray, general manager of PECO Hyperion, said his company would recoup its costs through the revenues generated by telephone voice service, and would benefit by being able to market its services to other customers near the fiber-optic network.
"It is a win-win situation," Murray said. "It is really for both of our advantages."
The announcement was made at John W. Hallahan Catholic Girls High School in Center City, the first school to be put on the network.
Using a school library terminal, senior Jennifer O'Brien showed Cardinal Bevilacqua how she was searching the Internet to gather information about organ donation for a paper for her theology class.
"It is amazing what they can do now," the cardinal said.
Brother Willard said that the archdiocese began exploring networking options after the Learning Edge, a consulting firm in Tappan, N.Y., conducted a technical analysis of the Catholic schools last year. While each Catholic high school decides how to use technol--ogy, the consultants urged the archdiocese to assist them by creating a network that would provide cheaper and faster Internet service.
All the schools will be linked to the Office of Catholic Education so that information such as attendance records, student rosters and grades can be shared instantly.
The other high schools that linked to the network this month are: St. John Neumann, South Philadelphia; St. Maria Goretti, South Philadelphia; Conwell-Egan, Fairless Hills; Archbishop Prendergast, Drexel Hill; Cardinal O'Hara, Springfield; and Monsignor Bonner, Drexel Hill.
Visit Philadelphia Online, the World Wide Web site of The Philadelphia Inquirer, at http://www.phillynews.com
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