AT&T Corp sent its vice-president for multimedia services Scott Perry along to address the conference, and he said he thinks business applications will lead the way for products developed as part of the information highway: Perry said the first stage of products will be for intra-business applications, citing mobile computers and mobile phones as technologies that can link employees; the second stage, he suggested, will be business-to-business applications that will make possible conferencing and buyer-and-seller exchanges via computer; only the third stage, Perry reckons, will be business-to-consumer communication, such as that for ordering products or creating long-distance classrooms – and the fourth stage will be consumer-to-business communication, including video on demand; Perry warned that the information superhighway won’t be a field of dreams where if a company makes a product, clients will come – customers will have to be cultivated as the developments occur, he advised the conference.
