Ray Van Eng (05/10/96)                        

PRODUCT AD

With all that hype and activities surrounding the cable modems these days, are the telephone companies doing anything about it? You bet. To counter the onslaught of cable modems, the telcos are increasingly looking towards Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL) as the technology weapon of choice.

Currently, there are on-going ADSL trails by US West Communications Inc. and NYNEX Corp. (The New York New England Exchange) with Pacific Bell following suit soon.

Compared to ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network) which has a bandwidth rate from 128 kbps to 1.5 Mbps, ADSL could go as high as 6Mbps and for the telcos, does not require expensive software upgrades for their central office switches that ISDN demands. Like ISDN, ADSL services can be delivered over the existing plain old telephone system (POTS) lines that all businesses and homes use.

An ADSL connection hooks up to a PC via a 10BaseT Ethernet network interface (NIC) card and will offer the user an initial downstream speed of 1.5Mbps and an upstream of 64Kbps to 384Kbps. Special re-wiring at the customer site is required, though the telcos say that the cost will be low. Although, duplex (i.e. two way) videoconferencing would present some difficulties with the present technology, Internet browsing is an ideal application.

Business and home users in the New York, New England areas could enjoy the new service as early as the end of this year, when NYNEX begins rolling out the service at $100 per month for speedy Internet access. US West will also offer similar services at comparable rates.

Acknowledging the general failure of the marketing of ISDN service in the US, Jeff Waldhuter, executive director, research and development at Nynex Science and Technology says that "To make the leap from a technical trial to mass deployment of this, a lot of things need to take place to do it right. We need to educate, come up with operational support systems, and educate the press so we don't wind up with another ISDN scenario".