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battery—almost three times the batterylife of previous models. An optionalhigh-capacity battery gives 7.2 hours ofuse, which can be extended a further2.5 hours by plugging a second batteryinto the computer’s peripheral bay.

The low power consumption canalso do away with the need for fans,allowing notebook makers to designslimmer, lighter notebooks.

A quandary for manufacturers

Intel’s current inelegant wireless LANdesign creates a dilemma for laptop man-ufacturers desirous of both benefitingfrom Centrino’s good performance andlow power and offering their customers

the best available wireless access technol-ogy—which they must obtain fromanother vendor. Intel bars them from dis-playing the Centrino brand name on theirproducts unless they use the completepackage. If they use only the Pentium Mand supporting logic, they must sell underthe Pentium M logo and miss out on thehundreds of millions that Intel is spend-ing on Centrino advertising. So mostmanufacturers are offering laptops basedon Centrino alongside others that useanother vendor’s wireless access circuitry.

Why, then, didn’t Intel wait until ithad completed its 802.11a+b circuitrybefore launching Centrino? According toIntel’s High, laptop makers didn’t want to

delay until June to introduce their newlines of Centrino notebooks. Besides, hesays, almost all hotspots use 802.11b.

As to the three-chip solution, Highdoesn’t believe it’s a problem. “We areseeing the smallest and lightest laptopsbuilt around Centrino. So I don’t thinkthat manufacturers are suffering in termsof their ability to conserve battery life andto make a smaller, neater, cleaner prod-uct.” The real issue is which approachcosts less. Buying the complete Centrinopackage with its three-chip wireless solu-tion could actually be cheaper than buy-ing the processor and logic chips fromIntel and the wireless chips from some-body else, he says. —Linda Geppert

The Cross-Sound Cable [red line]

will help meet growing energy

demand on Long Island’s South

Fork [orange area]. Transmission

lines bringing electricity from

neighboring areas [blue lines]

have kept the lights on, but are

barely sufficient.

ENERGY • Though utilities and inde-pendent power producers have been busi-ly catching up with the United States’ grow-ing demand, it’s still very tough to getpower to where it’s most needed. In fact, theprocess of deregulating and restructuringthe power industry may be hurting morethan it’s helping, to judge from the storyunfolding on Long Island. This slenderstrip of land stretches eastward from NewYork City, in parallel with the Connecticutcoast, until it reaches its forked, farthestpoints, about 175 km from Manhattan.

Cable Controversy Pits PowerHaves Against Have-NotsLong Island, N.Y., starves for power in a land of plenty

A flurry of development in the ritzyHamptons on the island’s South Fork haspushed peak demand up by 100 MW or soa year for each of the last few years. So onthe hottest days each summer, LongIsland Power Authority (LIPA, Uniondale,N.Y.) has struggled mightily to preventthe local grid from collapsing. Power linesrunning to Westchester County north ofNew York City, to the city’s borough ofQueens, east of Manhattan, and to Con-necticut help LIPA out, but are less andless able to cope with peak demand.

Meanwhile, efforts on the utility’s partto add capacity have been star-crossed atbest. Its predecessor, Long Island LightingCo., spent billions building the Shorehamnuclear plant near the island’s North Forkin the 1970s and 1980s but was neverallowed to operate it because of the likelydifficulty of evacuating the island in theevent of a catastrophic accident.

In what now seems a sorry repeat of thatsad tale, in May 2002, an electric powercable was placed under Long Island Soundbetween New Haven, Conn., and the site ofthe decommissioned Shoreham facility [seemap, below left]. The builder of the 36-km-long cable was a subsidiary of HydroQuebec’s transmission division (Montreal)and UIL Holdings Corp. (New Haven)called Cross-Sound Cable Company LLC.But on 6 January, the Connecticut Depart-

ment of Environmental Protection(DEP) ruled that the current wasnot to be turned on. The reason, orat any rate the pretext: near theConnecticut shore, 200 meters ofthe cable remains lying on, insteadof 2 meters below, the floor of thesound—the depth required by stateand federal authorities.

NorthportShoreham

New York

Southampton

New Haven

Norwalk

Levittown

Stratford

Yonkers

CONNECTICUT

LONG ISLAND

NEWYORK

LongIsland Sound

Area of fast-growing demandProposed transmission lineExisting transmission lines

Oyster beds

B R I E F S

CISCO KIDS NOT. Yes, the Internet tech-

nology company based in San Jose, Calif.,

has chosen Dubai Internet City, in the

United Arab Emirates, to be home for its

largest laboratory facility in Europe, the

Middle East, and Africa combined. The

mission of the US $2 million Synergy

Remote Lab, a joint undertaking with

Synergy Professional Services and the

e-Hosting Center, will be to train users of

Cisco equipment and for broader IT needs.

Individuals, Cisco partners, and educa-

tional institutes around the world will be

able to access the lab around the clock

and get hands-on training and practice.

CELL AT 30. On 3 April 1973, Martin

Cooper of Motorola [above] stepped out

the door in New York City and placed a

call with a Dyna-Tac handset, the nearly

1-kg, wholly portable phone that he had

concocted as head of his company’s cel-

lular R&D effort. The father of the cell-

phone believes he dialed Joel Engel,

head of research at AT&T Bell Labs.

Engel isn’t so sure. Anyway, it was the

world’s first handheld cellular call, and

maybe the first with bad reception, too.

INMARSAT EYES IRAQ. The British

business communications company

based in London has put a geostation-

ary satellite on active, full-time duty to

support the newly established Indian

Ocean Region West, part of the mobile

ISDN global area network (GAN).

Inmarsat expects the satellite, one of

five in-orbit spares in its group of nine

geostationary satellites, to be in big

demand by aid agencies, governments,

and the media. Until now, four satellites

provided the network’s high–data-rate

services on a nearly global basis; the

addition of the fifth to the main fleet

will ensure nonstop communications

services to the Middle East.

—John F. Mason & Willie D. Jones

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Left unburied, the Connecticut DEPsaid, the 330-MW cable could ensnare shipanchors. There’s also concern aboutmarine life, particularly the beds of oystersthat are an important part of the Sound’sUS $150-million-per-year fishing indus-try. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers,one of the agencies that gave permission torun the cross-sound cable, also wanted thecable buried, arguing that otherwise itmight interfere with future attempts todeepen the shipping lane it crosses.

The real issues

Connecticut DEP officials and the engi-neering corps agree that the electric line, asit sits, would not be harmful to the Sound.Still, the DEP has not cleared its activa-tion by Cross-Sound Cable Co . Further, ithas rejected proposals by the company tosink the exposed portion of the cable andasked the Connecticut Siting Council,which also has oversight over the project,to rule against turning the power on.

Observers say environmental con-cerns—at least on the part of state legisla-tors, who had sought a moratorium onenergy projects in the Sound—were a thinveil over the reality. Their rarely spoken rea-son for opposing the project is that the lineprovides little tangible benefit for Con-necticut residents, while aiding the un-checked rise in energy demand on LongIsland. As Connecticut Attorney GeneralRichard Blumenthal put it, “We will be vig-ilant against new projects that seek toexploit any transmission facility, siphon-ing power from Connecticut to LongIsland, raising prices for our consumersand harming our economy.”

Long Island need not take umbrage.Even within the state of Connecticut, thesiting of transmission lines has bredinfighting. Southeast Connecticut, likeLong Island, is cut off from the NewEngland grid by an inadequate trans-mission infrastructure. But attempts toapprove siting for an overhead powerline that would remedy that problemhave been fought by Connecticut resi-dents elsewhere. No one, it seems, iswilling to force a next-door neighbor togive up land for a transmission right-of-way if there is no local benefit.

Even the New York and New Englandindependent system operators (ISOs), setup to manage their respective regional grids

and ensure that infrastructure meets ener-gy demand, have been helpless to resolvethe cable disputes. When asked why thetwo ISOs couldn’t just hammer out amutually advantageous solution, KenKlapp, a spokesman for the New York ISO(Schenectady), said that “we have no inputregarding the operation of [the cross-soundcable]. We testify in court or issue reports ifcalled upon, but we have no direct influenceon political decisions.”

With regard to input from ISO–NewEngland (Holyoke, Mass.), Ellen Foley, aspokesperson for the agency, said that italso did not have the authority to forceadoption of its assessments, though itsstudy determined the line would be goodfor reliability in New England.

A national malady

If all had gone according to plan, thecross-sound cable would have been car-rying current within weeks of being laid,and LIPA would have had extra poweravailable last summer, when demand onthe island came within 1 percent ofcapacity. (The traditional reserve marginis 18 percent.) Instead, the cable remainsoff-line more than five years after it wasfirst proposed, and another difficult sum-mer could lie ahead.

Bad as this may seem, the situation isnot unique. One element in California’spower crisis of 2000–01 was a shortage oftransmission lines connecting powerproducers to power-starved regions, likeSan Diego and Silicon Valley, whoseneighbors nixed new lines that wouldnot include power specifically for them.

According to reports commissioned bythe Edison Electric Institute (Washington,D.C.), states like Mississippi and Wiscon-sin have continually failed to reach cross-border agreements related to who getstransmission access and when, despite theU.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commis-sion’s wish to encourage formation ofeffective regional power organizations.

For the near future, it seems, commu-nities across the United States will contin-ue to see power everywhere around themyet remain subject to sudden power short-ages. It’s like one of those disaster moviesin which someone is lost at sea, and,though surrounded by water, is dying ofthirst because seawater isn’t drinkable.

—Willie D. Jones

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