It is hard to say that a telephone is just a telephone anymore. Not only does it

It is hard to say that atelephone is just a telephone anymore. Not only does it let you hear Grandma'svoice from miles away clearer than ever before, but it is providing even moreimportant information services to its users. By the year 2000, American householderswill rely on the telephone system for shopping, computing, playing the stockmarket, making airline reservations, and watching television. The lives ofheart patients may depend on telephones with on line electronic systemsaltering their doctors to emergencies. This is in addition to American businessmanagers who currently rely on their telephones for sales orders, inventorycontrol, banking, video image transmission, and many other tasks.

New technologies, such asadvanced computing and fiber optics, make telecommunications services cheap andquick. In addition, since the breakup of AT&T, the competition spawned (引起) among many phone companies hasemphasized price changes and introduced innovative services.

But despite the stimulus toprovide commercial benefits during normal operation, one essential ingredientis missing—the incentive to design for emergency preparedness in the event ofdisaster. The telephone system is improving its ability to respond to someemergencies such as wartime attack, but is not prepared to handle terrorism,natural disasters, fires or accidents.

Before divestiture (解体) AT&T operated a nationalemergency center that coordinated all procedures during a disaster. Today, inlieu of the previous AT&T center, a government agency—the NationalCommunications System (NCS) —operates the National Coordinating Center toaddress disasters related to telecommunications. In addition, the numerousphone companies and large communications suppliers have developed mechanisms oftheir own to respond to limited emergency situations, but massive emergenciesare beyond their capabilities.

1.What does “anymore” in the first sentence of Paragraph 1 mean?

A. in anycase B. at no time

C. not longer  D. nowadays

2.“In Lieu of” in Paragraph 4 is used to mean

A. instead ofB. because of

C. In spiteof   D. due to

3.The writer's main purpose is to

A. describephenomena

B. propose amotion of the modem telecommunications sciences

C. amuse attentionto the limited uses of telephone in the event of disaster

D. argue a beliefof telephone

4.What would the following paragraph after Paragraph 4 more probably deal with?

A. the examples ofemergencies that telephone system can not deal with

B. differentopinions towards the telephone services

C. the writer'sconclusion of the passage

D. thedisadvantages of the National Communications System

试题答案

答案：1D2A3C4A