xDSL Optimist Among the Nay-Sayers

Gentle Readers,

Recent developments now give the large group of telcos and equipment vendors the name Universal ADSL Working Group and a 'mission' of a commonly agreed upon standard by Christmas 1998. Actually, they would like product on the shelves by then, so the target date would have to consider the economies and realities of manufacturing as well. The group has a focus on the North American market and will submit its plan to the ITU Working Group 15, which is the international xDSL group.

The group has taken on as its mandate a DSL technology that is slower than regular ADSL that will be customer installable (plug it in), voice compatible (the phone would ring and bandwidth would be reduced for the time of the call), inexpensive modems (current target of about what a high quality, name brand 56k modem costs) and low power consumption at the central switch.

Recent editorials have been critical of the group and technology. See PC Week for a moderately 'weak' editorial and InfoWorld for a more informed one from the "father" of Ethernet, Bob Metcalfe. The former criticizes the conception that the telcos will implement the technology; the reasoning being that there will not be enough money to be made. The latter propounds that the group should be taking a hard look at the 'new' MVL technology of Paradyne.

Let me de-bunk the first by saying that the telcos will have to implement the technology in the face of competition from those new fibre backbone providers who are busily burying high bandwidth pipes to carry the traffic. These same entities have the wherewithal to do the necessary documentation to gain their own access to local switches should it prove necessary. In that case the telcos are 'out of the loop' completely. I would think that the new service will replace the old and one of the major differences would be a higher local access bill with significant savings in (long) distance billing. Those people have to fill those backbones with traffic to make their investment pay off.

The second article really suggests that the working group is looking at the wrong technology. MVL uses a lower frequency than regular DMT, so it consumes less power (a critical factor at a switch office because of heavy regulatory requirements) and has a reduced complexity, as well as, enjoying an operable distance that is as good as any of the DSL formats. A good idea though it actually shares those characteristics with many of the newer "lite" technologies that are appearing.

A new semiconductor start-up Centillium has begun to show chips for its UDSL modems that are compatible with the "lite" specification. The "U" is for Universal so the alphabet soup gets even thicker. Texas Instruments is working with them, as well as, having its own DSP technology and the technologies of Amati, which it recently bought.

Universal ADSL Working Group (UAWG)

Centillium

And the UAWG Roster:

Sponsors - Ameritech, Bell Atlantic, BellSouth, Compaq, GTE, Intel, Microsoft, SBC Communications, Sprint, US West

Supporters - 3Com, Alcatel Alsthom, Analog Devices, Ariel, Aware, Bell Canada, Cirrus Logic Cisco Systems, Copper Mountain Networks, Covad, DSC, Diamond Lane, Ericsson, Globespan, Lucent, MCI, NetSpeed, Northern Telecom, Orckit, PairGain, Paradyne, Rockwell, Siemens, Texas Instruments, Tut Systems and Westell.

Pretty much of a "who's who" of the industry, with a couple of notable exceptions, and some companies I am not familiar with. Do remember that when building a URL of one of the telco companies that they have both '.com' and '.net' extensions possible and, in most cases, viable.

Expect the working group to attempt to move quickly and, if there is not too much decension, to have a working model within a few short months. Competition from other providers, or the perception thereof, could be an impetus. TCI has two big cable modem deals already signed.

Peace,
Clarke