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Kind Readers, Many of you may not have seen one these posts before, so if you are interested and need to "get up to speed" check the Archives for six months. Well, the different acronyms get all confused depending on who you talk to and what they say they are. The emerging markets for xDSL technologies in the US are corporate and university campuses in light of the fact that there is not a standard specification. They are able to limit equipment purchases to a single vendor so avoid compatiblity issues and gain the benefits of high-speed network access. A startup WebSprint Communications offers SDSL targeted at these markets and virtually avoiding the telecommunications providers. Their interpretation of the first *S* is that it stands for Symmetric. That added to Single-Line... and Synchronous... makes for the need to ask for a translation of the acronym when talking to a vendor. Virtually all large telecommunication suppliers in th US have trials running in areas, but have rolled back availability to next year at the soonest. Some trials have been enlarged. Microsoft has had its ADSL test size increased from 160 to 1000. In the first part of the test, they had the acursed crosstalk problem with a T1 on the same wiring bundle. When the traffic was routed to another bundle, the problem disappeared. Sources estimate that 75 to 80% of US phone lines are ADSL-capable and the rest would have to be upgraded to provide the service. This is in contrast to Europe, Singapore and Australia where the services are being "rolled out" now. They simply have newer infrastructure because WWII(Europe) and younger telecommincations industries(Singapore and Australia.) Canadians can also look forward to a roll out by Telus Corp. in October. They will be using the LoopRunner product by NetSpeed. Prices of the equipment have already begun to fall and are expected to continue a downward trend, especially with the increasing economies of scale. Some tests areas have the modem as a rental and the fee included in the monthly bill. Shades of the phone company forty years ago when you could not own the telephone!!! Third generation products are in the labs and will be out in testing probably next month. No word yet on the superb HDSL2 proposal and testing of equipment for it; lets hope that good sense prevails and they steer their services that way. We all know that superior technology does not always win and this one is newer than any of the others and, therefore, under a handicap. More small service providers in various regions are giving businesses the high-speed access of xDSL in some of its different flavors. Some of them are HarvardNet, Interaccess, IoNet and UUNet Technologies. Service is area-dependent and subject to availability. US West has HDSL available now in certain regions. Prices for different vendors vary widely depending on the flavor of xDSL they offer because of the bandwidth that is used. It should be pointed out that xDSL "modems" are called that for lack of a better term. No negotiation of the signalling is done at the ends of the lines as in regular modems. In some of the *flavors* voice and data can be integrated without problems. End-user implementation is as simple as "plug and go" but is not so simple at the central office switches. The telcos are still trying to figure out the type and level of service they will provide. CMP TechWeb http://www.adsl.org/ now Peace,
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Revised: 07/09/98 Copyright © 1997, 1998