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Headlines Dec 28, 1999
VDSL - Which way to go? Check out the Some readers of DSL Prime have millions of reasons to celebrate New Year's; a few have billions of reasons. But even those without riches, like this editor, can enjoy
being part of one of the world's most dynamic industries. Next Thursday, Jan 6, we'll have a special issue on DSL 2000, with new subscriber numbers, a relaunched website, and more. Meanwhile, enjoy
the holiday around the world. And those who can, follow the example of Henry Samueli of Broadcom, who donated $50M just before Xmas.
25% of US has four providers of DSL CES Las Vegas consumer DSL BellSouth Fiber for the future Telocity's $127M Xmas present Covad, PacBell point the way to "good cop time" Prism/Comdisco goes to $39/month consumer VDSL - Which way to go? The VDSL debate is between the Alliance, http//www.vdslalliance.com/, which is advocating a DMT approach and is led by Texas Instruments and Alcatel, and the
Coalition, http//www.vdsl.org/ with Lucent, Broadcom, and Infineon, preferring QAM. In his article, Martin Schenk claims the battle " is one of real-world practicality versus theoretical elegance. The proven QAM
technology solution fits well with the VDSL requirements and the POTS environment. Every anticipated problem within bandwidth interference and transient noise can be handled using existing QAM solutions, at less expense
and far lower power consumption than proposed DMT solutions." But Krista Jacobsen believes that VDSL/DMT will be more compatible with existing ADSL DMT equipment, more resistant to interference, and is worth
waiting till late 2000 for chips. Please read their Briefs Harvard's Lawrence Lessig is changing the terms of the open access debate. More important than which company is what people can see, making free speech
the issue. AT&T/@Home already restrict video content, protecting their revenue from Home Box Office & pay cable. AOL is spending tens of million dollars to get access, but the consumer issue is more powerful
than the corporate catfight. *** DSL.net announced that Louisville, KY, is their 100th operational city. They're the early leader in the national rush to serve smaller markets. *** Tucows
has gone live with an open source domain name registry, with a wholesale fee of $13/year. Hundreds of ISPs are likely to sign on shortly, driving down the cost of registration. *** Qwest's
California fiber build was halted for desecrating Native American burial grounds. *** George Holland has left Covad for Broadview Networks, a growing New York regional CLEC, and is sure to expand their DSL
offerings rapidly. They've also added CTO Ken Schulman, of AT&T & TCG. *** Accounting bores people, but has a powerful effect. The FCC
noted the largest incumbent LECs record approximately $30 billion less capital costs on their financial books than they include in their regulatory books. This is an artifact of old style regulation, when telcos had to lower consumer prices when costs came down. Today excess cash flow is used to buy other companies and expand internationally, except in the few areas of genuine competition. The FCC recommendation that the telcos "write down" that sunk cost is critical to future calculations of cost for network elements, etc., and will have a major longterm effect on pricing. *** Todd Spengler in Inter@ctive Week broke the story that
Intel will offer an ADSL modem at CES. *** Paradyne, DSL pioneers, reported 16 new patents earned by their research. *** Michael Kaufman has been named president-SBC/Prodigy
Transition while Carmen Nava takes his prior job as President, PacBell Consumer Markets. *** DSLnetwork's Dan Melmed pointed out our error last issue, when we should have identified DSLnetworks
as the new partner with Rhythms, not DSLnet. DSLnetworks is one of the largest national DSL resellers, with an attractive VAR program. Growing rapidly, deal soon to announce. Separately, Brad Sachs of Flashcom
gave us some insight about why he signed with Rhythms. Flashcom needed the capacity, as they have a backlog of 23,000 orders, to go with their 50,000 active subscribers, and they have a major PC OEM deal about to close.
Chips Lucent
released a home networking chip that runs Home PNA networking, ethernet, and a V.90 modem. It also interfaces with their Wildwire DSL chipset. *** Lucent works closely with, but also competes with, Broadcom/Epigram
, who has signed Compaq, Dell Computer, Intel, and 3Com. Broadcom's Jeff Thermond said "We cannot keep up with the demand" for home-networking chips. Their current digital gateway supports 4 voice
channels, video and data, and was a hit at the Western Cable Show. See below for VDSL articles. Around the world British Telecom
is planning massive layoffs, according to Peter Cochrane in the WSJ. *** Alcatel signed a major supply deal with KPN
of Holland, which suggests an inside track, but no confirmed order, as KPN/Qwest deploys 9 countries. *** Masayoshi Son of Softbank
is investing $100M in Korean Internet ventures. He told Reuters that Korea (the home of his ancestors) needs to provide computers for every school child if they are to compete internationally. He believes China will become the largest Internet market with 300 mil users by 2005, vs an expected 200 mil users in the US and 80 mil users in Japan. ***
AT&T Canada is moving into DSL. *** Olaf Blomeyer of KKF.net
told us they intend to go public next year, as they expand from Minden and Hannover to Köln, Hamburg, Berlin, and Frankfurt. Their target is the 51% of German small and medium enterprises they report Deutsche Bank believe will move to DSL. ***
ITXC reported delivering 1.5 million minutes of mostly international traffic on Xmas day over IP, a good augury for voice over DSL, set to take off over the next six months. *** EDSL
released inTENcity, a fast (10M) system that runs ethernet over telephone wires and easily networks a building. They had demo'd it at DSLcon in September. Deals Juno,
David Shaw's & Charles Ardai's 3 million strong free email service, now offers full, free Internet service, supported by advertising and premium offers. They've teamed with Covad for Juno Express, a key future revenue stream. A 2-3% take rate would make them one of the larger DSL ISPs. "Free" access has become practical, because wholesale dial-up service now costs $5-10/month. Put another way, giving away two years of Internet costs about $200 - less than AOL or most DSL companies spend to acquire a customer. Altavista & NetZero are pursuing a similar strategies, with over one million accounts each. This has to put on some pricing pressure. ***
Darwin Networks ordered another $3M in equipment from Tut. *** Nortel
wants to make it easy for Log On America to grow as a CLEC. They invested $5M, provided $45M in equipment financing, and have lent a chief technical officer. *** ECI,
Israeli equipment maker, has outsourced manufacturing to SCI in a move to cut costs. Stock Market Good luck to FirstWorld Communications of Denver, who filed an S-1 for an IPO (Lehman is the broker).
Investor Donald Sturm (MCI, Level 3, Continental and Northwest Air) is chair, and Sheldon Ohringer (late of ICG) President. They provide DSL along with hosting and Internet consulting. They've rolled up 9 ISPs and
integrators in California, Oregon, and Utah, and have ties to Enron for backbone. *** Sturm also led the $70M financing round for HarvardNet, along with Paul Allen's Vulcan Ventures, Fidelity, M/C, and Osborn
that refinanced the company after a withdrawn IPO. *** Barbara Costanza in CBS MarketWatch reported Lucent
"increased its committed level of vendor financing to $7.1 billion, 19 percent of sales in 1999, from $2.3 billion, 7.2 percent of sales in 1998." Powerful but risky sales tool, being matched by major competitors, including Nortel (see above) and Nokia. ***
NAS filed for a large secondary. *** Sad to note the passing, through a takeover by Tut, of Global Village. Their Mac modems were excellent, but they sold the modem product line to Boca last year,
concentrating instead on office routers and access devices. The company, now called OneWorld, will dissolve, while the engineering team has a bright future at Tut. *** SBC & Telmex, joint owners of Prodigy,
deepened their partnership with an investment with Williams in Algar Telecom Leste in Brazil (wireless). *** Coppercom
raised $30M from strong investors. Any smart VC or investment banker would kill to be part of their funding, (or Jetstream, Tollbridge, 2Wire, etc.) *** Will the bubble burst?
Barton Biggs, Chair of Morgan Stanley Investment Management, told the Times "Who could have ever dreamed that this thing would go as far as it did? ... The technology, Internet and telecommunications craze has gone parabolic in what is one of the great, if not the greatest, manias of all time." DSL Prime is not smart enough to predict the market, but we will be reporting on which companies have raised enough cash to support their burn rate and other questions market uncertainty raises.
Headlines Dec 15, 1999
Mike Malaga of Northpoint called DSL one of the most exciting industries in the world, after an extraordinary year. But instead
of resting on laurels, we'd like to inspire you to think how the future will be different. Email us with your opinions, on or off the record. We believe The Internet will be more than just computers - webtv's with hard disks will blow away video recorders. We don't know about smart refrigerators, but at $500,
second computers will become as common as extra phones for talkative teenagers, and new gaming machines have graphics to kill for.
Home nets, wired or wireless, will connect them all. "Routers" will replace modems. Telephony will be part of the system, with multiple lines the first app. The majority of the market
will be international, with every major telco in the world involved and in a great race with independent and cable competition. Singapore, Korea, and Taiwan may be going faster than Europe, and even most
of Latin America will deploy widely in 2000. Competition will be great for consumers, but will create massive losses as providers build market share. Survivors need efficient operations and creative
income-creating services. Freedom of choice in programming will become a major political and free speech issue, with access cost a deeper issue than censorship. @Home has indicated they want to limit
channels and draw major revenue from them; SBC says restrictions will not serve consumers, and DSL Prime believes program choice can be the trump that will allow DSL to pass cable. Video is essential,
and solving the backbone limits will be critical. 300K, part screen video, is a very bad compromise crippling in competition with cable. Peering, multicasting, broadband edge networks, and decisions
about opening DSL provider nets will be crucial. Can't forget security - firewalls, virus checking, backup and other services. Our self-serving prediction is that many DSL companies will recognize
DSL Prime as a key way to reach the market, and respond to our ad sales pitch.
That's our vision - what's yours? We want to hear, both on and off the record. So speak up, Bob, Catherine, Mike, Dennis, Rick, Joe, Jeff, John, Jay, Armando, Faraj, Vic, Kevin, Andrew, George, Bill,
Hans-Erhard, Tom, Gavin, Fred, Shannon, Laurie, Claudia, Danny, Cynthia, Jenna - and many of you less publicly visible. Share your thoughts and inspire the industry. db Rhythms $50M new tune Rhythms has built one of the highest performance networks, plans to cover half the nation in 2000, and now intends to build a brand and attract customers. They're targeting enterprise customers for direct sales, and technologically advanced families with multiple phones and PCs for their new partners to service. Initial offering will be 384/128 at $49, and they will shadow the Bell price-points with the aid of line-sharing savings. Rhythms Dan Foster told us they'll emphasize customer satisfaction, while providing strong marketing incentives to encourage ISPs to join them. Additional services - voice, VPN, ASP, more speed - are expected to repay the massive investment in building the customer base, so they're looking for the multi-surfer home. Industrial Light & Magic (the Star Wars shop) did the production, and they licensed the music of Gershwin's "I Got Rhythm." 1400 COs, 9 countries for KPNQwest With 9,000 miles of fiber going in the ground, massive web hosting centers, worldwide internet peering, and the backing of Qwest/US West in America and Benelux's KPN, this will be a formidable competitor. Germany first, and the rest of Europe as soon as the local loops are deregulated. They have 144 fibers in the Eurotunnel to England, and run the backbone at 10 gig. Their fiber ring already reaches 55% of the European market, with 80% planned for 2001. Yes, Sir! says Bell Atlantic to FCC's Kennard NY DSL into a subsidiary, line-sharing beginning this month, $7B long distance market likely to open When the President of AT&T looked into the eyes of Judge Greene, he knew he had to make concessions, and split AT&T from the baby Bells. Reuters' Aaron Pressman broke the dramatic story of BA's Ivan Seidenberg's similar epiphany. At a special hearing before Chairman Kennard, BA and Covad argued whether competition was working. The FCC's skeptical attitude called for concessions, and Friday BA accepted the subsidiary it had been resisting. Predictably, AT&T called the application still "fatally flawed," and Covad's Dhruv Khanna told DSL Prime there were still major steps required. But BA's Don Evans told DSL Prime "We're committed to make this work. We need that for future FCC credibility. Two way communication is the next step." Khanna previously told us "We'll meet anywhere, anytime, to make line-sharing work." Let's all hope they succeed in solving problems and serving customers.
Northpoint Equinix will remake the Internet Mike Malaga must break backbone stranglehold to deliver the data rates we need With $280M invested by Microsoft, Cisco, Northpoint and others, Equinix is building several dozen facilities where companies can directly exchange data at high rates. Today's limited Internet connectivity means a bad choice between excessive cost or diminished service quality. The technology is there, as gigabit routers, edge routing and DWDM fiber should be dramatically lowering the cost. But a cartel controlling the Internet backbone, led by MCI/UUNet, has kept backbone costs high, while public peering points, like MAE East, are bottlenecks. The Equinix alternative is a "super-mega pop" or a "telecom hotel grande", where dozens or hundreds of carriers can exchange traffic. Northpoint, for example, can meet ISP partners as well as edge delivery companies like Akamai, iBeam, and Sandpiper, exchanging data at reasonable cost and bypassing the congested and expensive internet backbone. Space will not be cheap, but the entire setup expects to be much cheaper than buying miscellaneous transit. Best of all, the greater the traffic and company count, the greater the savings. Founders Al Avery and Jay Adelson ran the Palo Alto Internet Exchange for DEC, a forerunner.
**** Attention All DSL experts -Don't miss this MUST ATTEND DSL EVENT !!! Take advantage of the EARLY BIRD Discount by enrolling before January 31, 2000 and receive $200 off!!! Gain the Competitive Edge by Streamng Multimedia Services over DSL. Voice & Video Phoenix, Arizona. March 22-23-2000. www.acius.net Co-sponsored By JetStream Communications & Efficient Networks; Cocktail Reception Sponsored by Tollbridge Technologies Contact Laureen Kelly 312-674-4705. Lkelly@acius.net (advt.)
Denser chips bring down costs ADI quadport, Globespan smart HDSL/SDSL Vic Jayashima told DSL Prime their new Quad chip requires under 2 inches of board space and .7 watts per port. The complete system requires 1.9 watts for full-rate, but if run in G.lite mode only 1.4 watts. When chip feature dimensions shrink from .25 microns to .18 next year, the same area will yield 8 ports. Jayashima believes the new design, along with recent customer wins around the world, will propel ADI into a "two horse race" with Alcatel for chip sales. But other vendors are also driving hard. Globespan used the flexibility of their design for a chip that does multiple flavors of SDSL, including HDSL2, and also announced a quad chipset. TI is making a move to voice, while companies like ITeX and Centillium look to make a major splash soon.
$299, 17meg hard drive set top box killer app Dish-TV, teamed with Microsoft, delivering personal video Who says DSL is just for conventional computers? The 10 hour personal video recorder is an enormous convenience, (half the price of RePlay or TiVo), and will be a great sales tool. Of course Dish or Microsoft have to subsidize the hardware, but is that any different from the free install/modem offers common now? Industry estimates are between $300 & $700 in marketing for each customer. Prodigy's $400 rebate is another example. Put some of that money into a box like this and watch the orders come in. Microsoft will, with a future WebTV, AOL has plans with Boca, US West is planning a second generation WebVision, and companies like 2Wire and Telocity are heading that way.
Westell + Teltrend = Broader reach, deeper products Marc Zoints new Prez, but 10% layoff expected Teltrend has something few DSL companies have - a history of profits, with products for T-1, HDSL, and protocol internetworking. They have a major British division (where Westell is working with Fujitsu to service British Telecom), and relations with nearly all the RBOCs. But since earning $19M in 1996, they've never matched that number, and their market price has been languishing, allowing Westell to purchase it for about $200M in stock. T-1 demand has continued, but obviously it will be cannibalized by DSL, so this this is a strategic move for Teltrend, as was Pairgain's contracting out to Mexican manufacture last week.
In-Stat DSL broke all estimates Over 1.5 million line cards were installed in North America by Q3, which corresponds to the surprising chip sales figures we've recently published. There's more than enough capacity to serve a million customers this year and almost another three million in 2000. 1500 ISPs already are offering DSL, Shannon Pleasant and In-Stat colleague Peter Meade (chair of DSLCon) are (along with the Telechoice group and a few quiet people on Wall Street) the top analysts in DSL.
Briefs SBC/PacBell has put G.lite on hold, although Alcatel's FG5 software, coming soon, will be used for further G.lite testing. SBC's comparison did show G.lite offered more density at lower power, an advantage that will be emphasized by G.lite proponents next month at CES in Las Vegas. But many others believe full-rate will dominate, including Aidan O'Rourke of Broadcom who told us "no provider will want to deploy technology, either at the CO or the customer premises, that will restrict the data-rates to below 1.5 Mbits/sec." A persuasive case can be made that actual power consumption and cost differentials will be insignificant in the long run. The argument rages at http//www.dslprime.com/News_Articles/a/Chip_dance/chip_dance.html *** During the California goldrush, the story goes, the greatest fortunes were made by the vendors of blue jeans; the DSL comparison may be the filters that protect the phone lines. Video DSL vendor mPhase has just jumped in with versions for both home and (Telcordia-tested) central office. *** Concentric joined the crowd filling for CLEC status in 50 states. *** Paradyne's Hotwire Connected is a new open partner program to qualify CPE and voice gateway products.*** Stanford's John Cioffi, who developed the DMT coding that is the basis of today's ADSL, joined the Board of ITeX, and gave a vote of confidence to their soft-DSL modem technology. In our last conversation went out of his way to acknowledge the early support he got from George Hawley at Bellcore, who now heads Nokia/Diamond Lane. *** Lucent put out a press release about remarkable market share gains in SDSL, based on an analyst report. Customer and product details were limited, however.
Around the world The Telia (Sweden)-Telenor (Norway) deal is becoming a soap opera - Chief Executive Tormod Hermansen, bested in a board struggle, punched out a reporter and is now the object of worldwide scorn in the press (a bad move that may give the board reason to fire him.) Bredbandsbolaget (B2), an agile DSL competitor, has a major opportunity in the chaos. *** Hanaro Telecom inked Efficient, 3Com and ADI for equipment as they race Korea Telecom to served what is rapidly becoming one of the most wired nations in the world. *** Would be investors in China should mark the words of Minister Wu Jichuan, who denied the WTO deal would open investment opportunities in all parts of Chinese telecom and Internet. Local wisdom will be essential. *** Etisalat ordered 5,000 lines of DSL from Ericsson to deploy in the United Arab Emirates.
Deals DSL.net's purchase of Tycho in California made it clear they intend to be more than an east coast regional. David F. Struwas and Ray Allieri told us they intend to continue to focus on business customers, opening 70 or more tier 2 & 3 markets. *** NEXTLINK is adding DSL with equipment from Adtran and linux operations software from Linkor. With wireless licenses for 95% of the US, they intend to offer fixed wireless in most major markets over the next year, and have a 16,000 mile fiber backbone under construction with Level 3. But DSL will be their technology of choice in certain markets. *** Nightfire software was chosen by DSL.net and Rhythms. *** AT&T/Excite@Home is customizing content for the Sega Dreamcast, which, like the Sony PlayStation II, may become prime replacements for set tops boxes and webtvs. *** Prism/Comdisco inked a 9 figure deal to purchase capacity from Williams, and is building out the network. *** Redback is working with Motorola on cable modems. These guys are everywhere these days.
Stock Market RC Networks raised $20M from Doug Carlisle of Menlo Ventures, BancBoston, and Seligman. Their SDSL MTU box costs as little as $3,500 (8 ports), resulting in a very low breakeven point for each installation. It has already been deployed in 25 locations. RC's Jerry Dusa told DSL Prime they look to grow that base by extending the line and using their financing for creative partnerships. *** NorthPoint received $250M in secured credit, arranged by Goldman Sachs, to finance their national buildout Headlines Dec 8, 1999
"If providers don't start delivering the speeds they promise, someone else will and take away the market." Anonymous industry executive. Bill Gates told the Streaming Media Conference broadband is "going to be a mainstream part of the PC and digital device experience." But if you go to Microsoft's new broadband referral page http//windowsmedia.microsoft.com/broadband/bbreferral.asp#BBREFRL, you'll see very few providers listed and they are looking for more at bbjump@microsoft.com. AT&T promises $30/month DSL for business In addition
"Nextgen" DSLAMs from Accelerated and Promatory winning sales $6.05/month to share the line in Minnesota
Free DSL - it had to come Briefs
Leo Hindery, late of AT&T/TCI, landed at Global Crossing/Frontier
to lead their web hosting business, already serving Yahoo!, The Motley Fool, Ziff Davis, MP3.com and eToys. He's at least the sixth CEO level exec to join GC, but they all seem to be getting along. ***
Xpeed has expanded to larger offices in San Jose. *** DSLnetworks has extended their aggressive reseller program to ASPs. *** Mike Pascoe of Pairgain
believes "the HDSL sector has become a commodity market," and hence they must cut expenses. They are moving manufacturing to SCI in Mexico, and cutting back staff in the US.
Around the world Korea Telecom is planning 1M DSL lines in the next year, while competitor Hanaro
is also expanding rapidly. Vic Jayasimha of ADI, supplier of many of the chips used in Korea, told DSL Prime that the Korean government hopes broadband will promote distance learning in a country renowned for hard work and a desire to learn. ***
British Telecom finally proposed unmetered Internet access at 36 pounds, not including ISP charges, or about three times what it costs in the more competitive US. DSL will be even more expensive. ***
Qwest is lighting fiber across Canada, and will offer
Headlines Oct 18, 1999
SBC $6B message to Wall Street promises Universal Broadband Service
In further questions, SBC executives added
Covad's Chairman/founder Charlie McMinn steps aside amid re-organization Positions eliminated to make Covad lean and
mean for a competitive market McMinn built the company, but now?
"I still believe in Covad, and I'm keeping my stock!" The money men make the big decisions Super package for ex-employees Telechoice expands with Atreus partnership
SBC predicts line sharing will be required by the FCC Conexant aims multi-mode ADSL chipset at computer vendors Briefs
Orckit's Izhak Tamir responded "we believe this is more of an attempt by Alcatel to disrupt Orckit's position in the market place, rather than a genuine interest in protecting their intellectual property,"
when Alcatel sued them for patent infringement. *** Net to Net introduced the IPD4000, an inexpensive (about $11K with 12 ports installed) easy to configure DSLAM. Vitts is their largest customer, wiring
New Hampshire and neighboring states at a planned 100-150 COs each quarter. *** Rick Forte of Itex, a chip design firm with investments from UMC and Intel, claims their new G.lite chips can work at 20,000 feet,
delivering performance comparable to other chips at 16,000 feet. Competitors are skeptical, pending independent testing. Around the world RC Networks inked Globelink
for a potential $15 distribution deal in China for their basement DSLAMs, one of the least expensive on the market. Deals US West will test in Denver wireless equipment from Adaptive Broadband.
In August, US West's Joe Zell suggested that the RBOC may choose fixed wireless instead of upgrading DLCs unless the cost of the DLC equipment came down. *** iBeam
received an investment from Covad, and is deploying their servers at Flashcom, High Speed Access Corp, NorthPoint, Rhythms, and Verio. iBeam sends content by satellite to servers within partner networks, bypassing the internet and increasing reliability. ***
Network Telephone chose Copper Mountain
DSLAMs to complement their Lucent Pathstar switches. They plan 250 COs throughout BellSouth territory during 2000. *** Reference designs for DSLAMs and DLCs for G.lite are available combining Dathpath'
s multi-channel analog front end (AFE) Lucent’s dual port ADSL-Lite chips. 50% off local loops from SBC & US West Covad subscribers up 86% for quarter to 31K
Retail breakthru - full-rate ADSL-in-a-box from BA & 3Com DSL.net IPO - at last! Alcatel - VDSL, G.lite, "wireless DSL", DLC/DSL
Conexant & Coppercom VoDSL chip SDSL - future or folly? "2B1Q SDSL will never be mass market. For one thing, there are a number of unique, vendor specific
implementations and they don't interoperate with one another. For another, 2B1Q SDSL has a detrimental effect on ADSL performance when deployed nearby. HDSL2, and its close relative, G.shdsl, will define a standard
that will permit vendors to deliver truly interoperable symmetric solutions. And they offer a symmetric solution which is compatible with the single most popular broadband solution being deployed today, ADSL. Anyone
deploying 2B1Q SDSL should think twice." Michael Weissman of Pairgain added, "HDSL2 technology is certain to take over the SDSL market. " Ron Cates of Conexant, the main producer of SDSL chipsets,
responded, "Not true - 2B1Q SDSL is already a mass market. Conexant is shipping about 1 million SDSL chipsets per quarter into this market today. And has been doing so for quite a while. Almost every CLEC DSL
offering is based on 2B1Q technology, as is, of course, all of the ILEC based HDSL T1 transport and many DAML systems." Copper Mountain reported “an installed base exceeding 3,000 DSL concentrators [with]
575,000 lines of SDSL port capacity." George Hawley of Nokia/Diamond Lane added "SDSL is serving a useful purpose in the DSL marketplace. It works and is very economical. " John Reister of Copper
Mountain, Tom Stumbaugh of Rhythms, and Bill Euske of Northpoint contributed "Symmetric DSLs based on 2B1Q are widely deployed at various rates in every ILEC territory. It is a little late for 2B1Q SDSL to NOT be
mass market. It is deployed ... in over 50 metropolitan areas-more than 2500 central office installations. HDSL2 is an efficient means of offering traditional T1 service at 9kft. However, some applications, including
packet services, can be more cost-effectively offered by using SDSL.... While tremendous progress is being made, G.shdsl is still relatively early ...We expect that there is room in the market for both HDSL2 and SDSL,
serving different applications." Briefs Multidynamics'
DSLcon continues to grow, announcing new conferences next month in Amsterdam and next year in Canada and Hong Kong. Conference Director Peter Meade told us attendance this year was over 1,000, breaking all records. He believes
2Wire's Brian Hinman deserves an award for bravery for the presentation "G.lite is G.dumb", and we've posted Around the world DSL is a worldwide movement, and DSL Prime welcomes leads on international stories, especially from our
several hundred international readers. Email dave@dslprime.com. Korea Telecom is rumored ready to announce plans for 100,000 ports of ADSL, while Michael Kim of Internet.com reports Microsoft has invested
$10M in Thrunet, a Korean cable modem provider. *** In Geneva, Alcatel announced that Telkom Austria ordered equipment for 20,000 lines of DSL. Nokia,
the hometown favorite, was chosen by Helsinki Telephone for DSL. Siemens and partner Efficient landed Tele Denmark. Deals Tut Systems & BA began a small trial of home networking, but
deployment is in sight BA's booth at Internet World had a big sign marked TUT - coming soon. *** PSInet signed Rhythms for service in seven markets. *** Dslnetworks, a growing nationwide provider,
chose Nortel/Shasta's 5000 subscriber management system, which has the capacity to handle 15,000 users in a single box. Stock Market Next Level
priced it's IPO at $10-12 per share, indicating a value for the video over DSL network company of over $1B. They supply the Phoenix US West video network, and their equipment is among the world's most sophisticated, but they will remain 80% owned by General Instrument, about to be purchased by Motorola.*** 1.5M shares of
Covad's 13M offering will be sold by insiders cashing out $60-70M; the balance will pre-fund most of the company expected losses for the next three years. |
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