DSL info for consumers & the industry.
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DSL Prime is always looking for news. Email Dave Burstein editor@dslprime.com DSL Prime - the trade paper of an Internet community
"Get us what we need in Washington, and we'll deploy more DSL." The telco told Andy Grove not long ago. "You'll get it," Grove responded. "But Intel needs you to go further, to fiber" Ohio's PUC decided they've had enough of empty promises (along with bad service) and ordered DSL deployed to all the COs in Appalachian Ohio. Chairman Alan Schriber has a Ph.D in Economics, and knows his state needs faster connections. At $10,000 or less for a small DSLAM, the whole state could probably be wired for less than Ameritech spent fighting their performance audit, and certainly for less than the fine Ohio backed off from imposing for poor service. Breakeven is a 5% take rate among 1,500 homes - almost guaranteed. Universal service is good business - ask BellSouth, Belgacom, Germany, Korea or Japan. Ohio and New York also ordered dramatic cuts in telco charges to competitors - powerful trends that may accelerate after the NARUC regulators conference next week. Say hello at that conference to Dave Burstein, a round fellow with a beard. The free job ads are working well. AFC's Mark Abrams reports they "have gotten a very good response from the ad. Not huge numbers (10-15) as much as high quality candidates, which is what a hiring manager wants! I am bringing in 1 person who found me through the ad next week, and a few more are under consideration." Broadcom, Celsian, General Bandwidth and Corecess/Medialincs sent new positions. That's great, although I'm going to edit for length. I'm visiting Israel this week, presenting at Smartlink, makers of soft modems. I'd welcome the chance to meet other readers on Thursday - email me please. **World’s Smallest DSLAM. The CONKLIN FASTmux Model 2000 overcomes the barriers hampering ADSL deployments from DLCs, small COs, ONU cabinets and at MTUs. Measuring 1/3 the size of competing designs, installation into any DLC and most ONU cabinets is guaranteed. Start-up costs are the lowest in the industry. The FASTmux system scales from 4 to 46 ADSL ports yielding pay as you grow economies and the lowest per line costs. Visit <http://www.conklincorp.com/> or email tholland@ny.conklincorp.com (ad) Floyd leaves Siemens behind Will need U.S. strength to hold customers Ten months ago, Siemens purchased Efficient Networks and promptly made CEO Mark Floyd the leader of their American telecom division. Floyd had built Efficient by delivering quaity products designed for the precise needs of his major customers, U.S. telcos. That experience - and those relationships - seemed precisely what the worldwide powerhouse needed to become a factor in the American market, where results had long been disappointing. Winning major orders from the U.S. telcos would require a strong staff and presence, which Floyd began developing. Results, everyone knew, would take several years. Floyd netted as much as $100M from the Efficient sale and could have taken a saleboat around the world; his willingness to work hard for Siemens was a strong endorsement of the corporate prospects. Amidst global Siemens cutbacks, Floyd has now left the job. (When you don't have to consider money, you have a lot of choices in life.) He could have continued in a role as a super salesman, but ultimately success at the telcos requires a strong operation to support them. Siemens globally is struggling financially and cutting back. However, they now need to send a message they are committed to North America, with a strong new leader, retention of the staff, and minimizing layoffs. The targeted telcos are far more likely to buy from an American operation led by top technical talent and a strong team. ** Texas Instruments introduces the highest "true" density ADSL solution in the industry. The new AC6 ADSL CO chipset allows manufacturers to cost effectively increase the number of subscriber lines while providing the lowest power consumption in the smallest area, producing a greater overall line card channel density than competitive solutions. With tightly integrated analog and RBOM components and a total systems approach to incorporate advanced power management and board level integration, AC6 delivers world-class dependability, deployability and performance. www.ti.com/sc/ac6 (ad) New home for LSI next gen DSL chipset? New AFE and CP as LSI exiting the business Stephen Ellwood is proud of his new communication processor. "We've combined our version of the Alcatel DMT engine (under license) and a new communications processor. Previously, as VP of Engineering at Virata, I was responsible for the Virata (now Globespan) Helium, the current leader. I have every confidence that the AR900e could be the next biggest selling chipset." LSI has worked closely with Alcatel, including xxx. Last year, they used $800M in stock to purchase video chipmaker C-Cube, and intended to to use their communications processors, DSL chips, and DSPs to produce set top boxes, but that market has been slow to develop. Unfortunately, CEO Wilfred Corrigan has decided to cut 1,700 jobs and is "in discussions" to sell the DSL modem business unit, according to EET. The 75 experienced engineers are a team that companies like Globespan might have purchased for $100M a year ago, but today it's not clear whether they and their designs will find the right buyer. (Interested? Contact your banker or email dave@dslprime.com for an introduction) ** The DSLAM that fits everywhere. ADTRAN's compact, temperature-hardened Total Access DSLAM is POWERFUL enough for the central office, TOUGH enough for the remote terminal. A versatile, six-inch chassis supports central office, new remote terminal, and existing remote terminal, and multi-tenant equipment installations. This temperature-hardened equipment has been tested and proven to operate reliably in harsh, external conditions making Total Access DSLAM the perfect choice for distributed environments. For a free application overview, http://www.adtran.com/dslp111901 (ad) 4Q: Japan 875K, Bell Canada rolling (132K), SBC still hurting (146K) Japan ADSL passes cable 1.5M customers, almost all in the last year, and the majority installed after September, when YahooBB launched the $22 per month service. Justin Beech writes he just came back from visiting, and ads for DSL were ubiquitious, and demand is exploding. U.S. adds over 600K to over 4.4M Bell Canada added 132K, reaching 757K, by far the highest penetration in North America. They are third in the world, after Korea and Taiwan. Availability is well over 70% of the Canadian population, with plans to reach 90% soon. Subscriptions would be even higher if management hadn't cut back on marketing for much of Q2 and Q3. Add Telus (200,000) and MTT, and the Canadian DSL subs are over a million. If the U.S. telcos deployed at that rate, the U.S. DSL sub count would be 8-10M, passing cable and ending all the noise about broadband demand. SBC, serving three or four times the population, only added 146K new subs, despite increasing promotion by AOL & Earthlink. They intended to connect 350K per quarter a year ago, while DT and NTT with similar numbers of lines are prepping for 500-750K per quarter. "We are falling behind in broadband," Cisco CEO John Chambers worries, adding "For our nation's competitiveness and the future of our economic development, we must not fail." For Q4, U.S. net adds should be 625K to 650K, with the largest already announced: Verizon BellSouth SBC Bell Canada Qwest Covad Sprint, Telus, mPower, Focal, Alltel, etc. are still to come. The U.S. yearend, therefore, will be just under 4.5M, while Canada has recently passed the million mark. Germany, Sweden, and Belgium have already passed the U.S. penetration rate, and Japan will do so within the next month or two. All are accelerating faster than the U.S. The difference is the price. Small telcos have big deployments Ed Pinkham (www.pinkhamgroup.com) points out how much of the problem is unresponsive big telcos. "We just finished a survey of DSL deployment by the hundreds of independent LECs and found that they have been extremely aggressive in rolling out DSL services. Today the independents currently serve over 4.5 million homes with DSL (verses the RBOCs' 72M), they have deployed DSLAMs in over 2,000 COs (verses the RBOCs' 4,600). The independent telcos now service over half their customer base with DSL." "While the RBOCs maintain that DSL deployment is not viable in low density coverage areas, the independent telcos haven't noticed. In fact the independents have deployed DSL in COs serving only hundreds of homes. The average density of Independent DSL deployment is only 2,300 homes/CO...which compares very favorably to the RBOC average of 16,000 homes/CO. The average RBOCs undeployed COs is even larger than the average CO deployed by the independents. If the RBOCs were run like the independents nearly all of their COs would be DSL deployed today." These 15,000 smaller COs cover 20-30% of the unserved Americans, and Verizon & SBC can profitably serve them today. BellSouth is already doing so, having reached 116 out of 120 in North Carolina and 83 out of 119 in South Carolina - with 21 more scheduled in 2002. In Q4, BellSouth equipped 230 new COs (total of 1025.) SBC did 165, to reach 1350, and Qwest just 2, to 346. SBC and Qwest have been maintaining their 2001 spending cuts "will not affect our key growth driver, data including DSL." The numbers don't correspond ** NetFlare from Teradyne can reduce customer support costs up to 65%. In less than two minutes, you can verify QOS and isolate any source of congestion. NetFlare identifies the owner of network problems and determines if the DSL provider service commitment is met, Requires no measurement boxes in every exchange or software in the customer's PC. Full product description and actual field results at http://www.teradyne.com/prods/btd/netflare.html (ad) Paradyne, Alcatel Micro collaborating on long reach chips Will it become a standard? Providers have learned the hard way that insufficient reach of DSL is very costly, forcing them to turn away customers expensively attracted. Every chipmaker in the world has been working to improve reach, but Paradyne's low frequency ReachDSL is the one approach with a proven record in the field of better performance at 15,000 feet and more.) As loop length increases, low frequencies are attenuated less than high frequencies. Thus, at the receiver, low frequency signals are received at a much higher power level than high frequency signals. Paradyne's tests, reported in the Forum's DSL Everywhere white paper, show performance over 300K at 20,000 feet and more. Alcatel Microelectronics is the largest producer of DSL chips in the world, supplying both Alcatel itself (30+ share of the DSLAM market) and numerous others, including many of the independent modem manufacturers. This deal makes ReachDSL a key contender for widespread deployment, if it becomes an open standard. Alcatel's Kevin Kohleriter writes "this agreement is a first step toward helping in this standardization activity." To become a standard, Paradyne must agree to license the technology on "reasonable and non-discriminatory terms." The payoff is not royalties (although they could add up), but leadership in future products. DSL Prime believes Paradyne's Sean Belanger has the diplomatic skills to build an industry consensus, and that making Reach a standard will open doors for the company. ** The Electronic Frontier Foundation protects rights and promotes freedom on the Internet. Your donation supporting EFF's work will make a crucial difference. https://www.eff.org/support/donate-cc.html (psa) $10 to upgrade a modem to a gateway Centillium adds NAT and firewall to chipset One Palladia chip is analog, and includes the line driver. The second is digital, with a MIPS core powerful enough to perform most of the standard gateway functions. The price, in quantity, should be (well) under $30 (including software), or about $10 more than a plain modem chipset. Low noise in the AFE should improve performance considerably over short loops. Almost three years ago, SBC Fred Chang predicted their modems would soon include "router-like functions", but few have delivered in volume. As Centillium's chips (sampling now) become incorporated in designs (and others match their functions), it will be cheaper to provision every home a gateway than to deal with upgrades and extra inventory items. The Palladia 300 has more processing power, designed to do full IPSEC security processing at wirespeed. ** Eliminate your truck rolls. Increase your profitability. Read Paradyne's new whitepapers to learn how to overcome poor copper conditions, interference and bad premises wiring. Get them now at http://www.paradyne.com/cgi-bin/return?url=page01dslpwps.pl (ad) Billing brings Pac Bell suit SF Chronicle reports consumers can't get help I wasn't looking for another SBC problem story. I've had to write so many I'm boring you, and there's a big one coming I'm researching. But this one highlights a problem common in the industry. What should a consumer do when the usual channels aren't working? At Qwest, Nacchio will tell a public audience to email joe@qwest.com, and he has a team who follows up. But I couldn't get any information for my book about how a consumer could solve intractable problems, despite two requests to each of the other telcos. Good operations people know that investigating complaints is a great way to find operations problems, and ultimately saves money. "Quality is Free" is the lesson from Phil Crosby - it's cheaper to find and prevent problems than to fix them afterwards. Bobbie Schaefer of San Diego decided not to order DSL, but Pac Bell started charging her anyway, threatening to cut off her phone service, per Todd Wallack's report. She spent a hundred hours dealing with Pac Bell's mistake, perhaps a subjective count but one that rings true. (I'm being harassed for months by a long distance company that insists I pay a bill that's incorrect) Michael Shames of the Utility Consumers' Action Network believes thousands of customers were affected statewide. Although SBC's Britton said the problem was resolved months ago and affected very few people, DSL Prime was able to quickly confirm dozens of cases, some current. SBC clearly has a billing system that's broken, resulting in a "database reconciliation" that disappeared more than 100,000 subscribers last year, and thirty thousand orders lost and needing manual rekeying. "AOL DSL NIGHTMARE!" was the subject of (yet another) email today, illustrating the same problem. The writer was still down after three weeks, having "spoken with AOL Tech Support at least 2,385 times (just a bit of an exaggeration)" and giving me enough details to see where AOL tech support had gone wrong. If you don't have means for customers to solve problems like this, most will give up and become part of your statistics for churn and non-payment. Some will write to journalists like me. AOL has given me no way to help her, so I suggested she complain to the FCC at http://gullfoss2.fcc.gov/cib/fcc475.cfm . Not too many folks know to complain there, so it usually gets a good response. Unless the telcos give me an alternate for people they're not taking care of, I'm going to start sending them to the FCC. Ohio orders SBC to deploy DSL Customer benefits in lieu of massive fines for poor service Chairman Alan Schriber is a former economics professor appointed by Republican Governor Taft, not a corporate basher. An independent audit of SBC/Ameritech service was devastating. "Ameritech eventually admitted that it had not provided an acceptable level of service to its customers" the order concludes. "Ameritech improperly categorized over 100,000 service troubles," many of which should have resulted in customer credits. 30 or 40% of the time, SBC service reps did not even minimally comply with the state rules, partially because SBC's call centers are so disorganized even the company could not determine where many Ohio customer's calls went, much less that they were handled properly. "The Commission also found in its opinion and order that Ameritech was liable for up to $122 million as a forfeiture to the state of Ohio." In practice, Ohio lowered the fine to $8.5M, immaterial to SBC, and ordered a few million more in credits. They ordered SBC to provide $400K for 911 emergency service, and to provide DSL in selected, poorer counties in Appalachia. That cost was unspecified, but DSL Prime calculates the DSLAM installation can be accomplished for less than $1M, and will be profitable. Ohio's definition of advanced services includes two way video "Advanced telecommunications services are high-speed, full broadband telecommunications that enables a customer to originate and receive high-quality data, graphics, and video." They not requiring that initially, but this makes Ohio one more state solidly against Tauzin-Dingell, that requires only a unidirectional connection. "SBC will make broadband transport service and applications available to nearly 100 percent of our wireline metro-area customers by 2003." That's not an Ohio order; rather it's Ed Whitacre in SBC's last annual report. the commission has merely ordered Whitacre to deliver what he promised. Bill Daley also is clear about SBC's responsibilities. "SBC's commitment to supporting the communities in which we live and operate is more important now than ever before. In this challenging economic climate, we must ensure the continued development of our communities and delivery of excellent customer service. We will continue to be there for our customers and neighbors." I urge him to read the Ohio report, "The Commission expects more of the company and, more importantly, after what its customers have been through, they deserve better than what they have been receiving." Paul Duffy led a team that wrote clearly. Paul Antonuk of Liberty Consulting Group provided remarkable details on the problems and how they might be repaired. 53 thoughtful pages at http://dis.puc.state.oh.us Case # 99-938. New York cuts competitors rates over 30% Verizon will not abandon New York State New York wants competition for Verizon, which clearly hasn't developed. The PSC doesn't want to return to strict rate-of-return regulation, and Verizon certainly wouldn't want their profits correspondingly reduced by a third or more. The PSC therefore just dropped UNE charges to competitors dramatically, hoping more realistic pricing will spur competition. Newer pricing studies, both by the state and Queens College Professor David Gabel, suggested that the costs claimed by Verizon for the unbundled elements were particularly high, allowing the drop. Verizon's Crotty said "that the rates Verizon is permitted to charge already don't cover the real costs of building and operating the network that competitors use to serve their customers and ... are already below Verizon's costs." Verizon has to make heroic accounting assumptions to make that claim. Verizon doesn't release enough data for an independent to judge the accuracy of their accounting, and it's a task of months far beyond this reporter. A little common sense makes it highly dubious - add together the costs Verizon (or any other telco) claims for this kind of service and they are substantially greater that their total revenue, and the companies would be exceedingly unprofitable. Crotty went on to make the astonishing suggestion that Verizon, faced with more competition, "will have to decrease our capital investments in New York." New York is Verizon's best market, highly profitable, and not one they would abandon to the competition. Basic economics suggests that stiffer competition would force Verizon to give better service and/or cut rates, as Verizon argues strenuously when looking for long distance permission. In Ohio, "Ameritech has the legal obligation to provide adequate service to its customers and is required to make the appropriate expenditures to meet its obligation." I hope the New York PSC has a similar requirement that it strictly enforces if Verizon was cut back in spite. Reality is hard on regulators worldwide these days. Nearly all, including the New York State PUC, have spent the last decade trying to deregulate, believing that competition will do the job for them. This hasn't worked for consumers, and with the financial problems of competitors, it probably never will. McLeod's bankruptcy is just the latest example hitting them over the head. Any professional banker will tell you the money won't be there for CLEC builds after the tens of billions lost in the last 18 months. I personally analyze consumer telephony markets from a starting point of telco dominance, but that requires a paradigm shift that few are ready to accept. Regulators have spent a decade trying to create competition, and they are emotionally not ready to give up the idea. Intellectually, many understand they've made a mistake. In remarkably similar words, top officials in both American and England accepted policy wasn't working. "Maybe telephony really is a natural monopoly," both suggest in private conversation. But following that thought to a logical conclusion would mean reversing course on deregulation, very difficult and sure to meet massive resistance from the telcos currently benefiting from unregulated monopolies. A rough guess is that telco profits would drop by a third to half if regulators forced them to adjust their pricing to what it would be under competition, or $5-15B in the U.S. alone. Other states in the wings "Other state commissions will almost certainly look to New York as a precedent," Glenn Bischoff wrote in Telephony. The other Ameritech states are up in arms, with Illinois regulators being the most militant. Michigan Governor John Engler recently said "Michigan needs broadband. And I will not let Michigan continue to fall behind. ...Powerful special interests from out-of-state will oppose." The Ohio decision is already circulating widely among state regulators. Many will follow the model, of setting minimum standards of performance and then independently auditing the telco compliance. Email:
Employment: Ads are free for two issues to any company in the field looking to hire. Just send a short ad with a dedicated contact to jobs@dslprime.com. Job ads: To help in these hard times, DSL Prime offers free two issue ads to any company in the industry looking to hire. Just send a short announcement with contact to editor@dslprime.com.
BSEE (MSEE Preferred), MBA, minimum 7 years experience in the semiconductor business, direct strategic and tactical marketing in DSL, direct experience with working with PTT's, CLEC and Broadband Telco service providers
Telecom Software Engineer (SW-US-02): Responsible for developing Voice over DSL (VoDSL) product. Expertise required in development of GR303 and V5.2 with responsibility complete development cycle. BSEE/MSEE degree with 7 years of telecom software development in communications industry. System Test Engineer: (SWTST-US-03): Responsible for testing next generation Voice over Broadband products. Responsibility includes but not limited to Developing and executing test plans/test cases in scaled system test environments, Developing and executing automated test scripts for Voice over DSL gateway and CPE products, Troubleshoot and collaborate with development groups to identify defects and solutions and Defining test requirements for future products. BSEE degree with 5 years of experience in communications industry.
Commanding knowledge of CMOS mixed signal ICs for signal processing and telecommunication application. Ability to manage a complex mixed signal chip development from creation into high-volume production. Good background in mathematics, and ability to approach design problems analytically. Strong leadership acumen.
EMBEDDED SOFTWARE DEVELOPER 8 years experience in embedded, real time OS, VxWorks, pSOS environments; experience developing code for large embedded applications. Strong C/C++ programming. Telecommunications firmware and internetworking product development a plus. Applicants should have a BSCS or BSEE degree; MSCS or MSEE preferred. SOFTWARE ENGINEER 3+ years of software development experience; BS CS or equivalent required. Real-time embedded software development experience and C/C++ required;IP, PPP, frame relay, ATM, vxWorks, switching and routing preferred.
DSP SW Engineers to develop DSL chipsets. SW Design Engineers for embedded system SW development Respond to Cheri@TI.com for any of these jobs
Headlines Jan 23, 2002
"The President should set a goal of making an affordable 100 megabit per second to 100 million homes by 2010" said Technet's CEO committee. Ivan, Ed, Duane - you own the lines. Will you give John Chambers what Cisco and the U.S. economy needs? George Bush is listening, and may say something in the State of the Union Address. Sprint's DSL is up to 8 meg downstream for $169 to all business customers, just as Yahoo followed by NTT have done for consumers in Japan. 7 meg in Japan costs Bandwidth costs have come down so much you can virtually provision 8 meg out of your marketing budget. The upstream, 384-512K, is as fast as most SDSL services at similar prices. Deutsche Telecom passed 16,000 orders a day recently, Walter Beforth writes. This is a remarkable achievement, important enough to affect national politics and the German economy, although competition needs protection. Germany now has a base that will spur new services over the net. One will be video, and the best-selling Alcatel 7300 DSLAM just got upgraded. Alcatel added IP and subscriber management as well - look out, Redback. I was reminded how even the best in the industry are becoming victims when one of the most informed of the Wall Street analysts, Anton Wahlman, was a victim of the latest cutbacks at UBS Warburg. He'll be a great addition wherever he lands next. His current email is anton_wahlman@yahoo.com. At UBS, Anton covered the most interesting of the telecom and cable equipment stocks, including SFA, CTLM, GSPN, NXTV, TERN, HLIT, ARRS, CCBL. Two folks with appropriate experience are being considered for a COO position at a growing ISP because of the listings in DSL Prime last issue, and three more companies have taken me up on the offer of free job offerings at the end of the news. **World’s Smallest DSLAM. The CONKLIN FASTmux Model 2000 overcomes the barriers hampering ADSL deployments from DLCs, small COs, ONU cabinets and at MTUs. Measuring 1/3 the size of competing designs, installation into any DLC and most ONU cabinets is guaranteed. Start-up costs are the lowest in the industry. The FASTmux system scales from 4 to 46 ADSL ports yielding pay as you grow economies and the lowest per line costs. Visit <http://www.conklincorp.com/> or email tholland@ny.conklincorp.com (ad) Sprint: 8 megs for the price of 1 No speed limit on $169 business service David Palen has 2,000 COs of Lucent Stingers that need to bring in revenue, fast. They were installed for the now cancelled ION project - voice and data for business and residences. Now, they are the base of a remarkable network dedicated to business DSL, which was just relaunched across the country with attractive pricing. Perhaps half those COs are being lit, a network comparable to Worldcom but smaller than Covad. While some businesses do require more than 512K upstream, using ADSL offers considerable cost savings. Covad's price for 384K upstream is $199/month, with a much slower downstream than Sprint. (Covad offers more of an SLA, however - Sprint's is essentially meaningless, refunding $6-18 if you report a total outage. Covad's service, while not perfect, has been the best in the business. Covad's now in the position of being the company to beat.) Of course, the actual speeds are limited by distance from the CO, line quality and download server speeds. But many customers will get multi-megabit speeds, particularly in business districts close to the COs. In large telco volumes, the cost of the added bandwidth for business customers is between $5 & $20/month, depending on the assumptions of traffic and over-subscription ratios. That's very attractive, if the improved speed brings you a business customer worth $500 or more. Giving 8 meg to consumers is much cheaper, between $2 & $7 per month, because over-subscription can be much higher. Medium or small ISPs with lower volume face much higher costs, probably double. Sprint, AT&T, Qwest & MCI already have backbone in place, so their real costs are probably lower. Business DSL may prove competitive after all, even if consumer competition has failed. ** Texas Instruments introduces the highest "true" density ADSL solution in the industry. The new AC6 ADSL CO chipset allows manufacturers to cost effectively increase the number of subscriber lines while providing the lowest power consumption in the smallest area, producing a greater overall line card channel density than competitive solutions. With tightly integrated analog and RBOM components and a total systems approach to incorporate advanced power management and board level integration, AC6 delivers world-class dependability, deployability and performance. www.ti.com/sc/ac6 (ad) 16,000 a day in Germany 2 million subscribers bring DT to takeoff Christopher Bland of British Telecom is feeling the heat from the remarkable results in Germany. He may have a Prime Minister talking about "Broadband Britain", but he hasn't delivered while the Germans have. There's no secret to the German success. They priced competitively (30 Euros) and deployed widely (90% of the country is close at hand). Operationally, they made sure everything worked well, which means they can project an operating profit from DSL within two years. The result is subscribers growing at more than twice the rate of SBC or Verizon, who serve a comparable territory and had a two year head start. The Koreans continue to lead the world, but Germany and Japan are proving Korea is a model, not an exception. DT now will rapidly launch video, gaming, and other value add services. It's an extraordinary accomplishment, which will now be matched by other German companies creating innovative Internet applications. Can competition be saved? DT has more than 98% market share, making Mathias Kurth's job of promoting competition almost impossible. The results of the monopoly are already clear: DT has just raised their price for DSL by about 10%, typically from 30 Euros to 33. DSL Prime's previous reporting on DT had an error of fact and probably one of analysis as well. The most common fee for the DSL line connection has been in combination with ISDN for about 10 euro, which is in fact difficult to justify on costs. (Most German Internet users already have ISDN connections. The higher fee I previously reported was for analog phones.) 80% or so of customers also buy ISP service from DT's subsidiary, T-Online, at a combined price of 30 euro. This pricing was a means of moving profit from DT itself to T-Online before the projected T-Online IPO. Even with a zero charge for line-sharing, that was at or below cost and impossible to compete with. The overall price of 30 Euros is right on target, but allocating only 10 Euros to the connectivity effectively prohibits QSC and others from providing crucial facilities based alternatives. DT has postponed line-sharing, crippling residential alternatives and angering RegTP. Now, with 2M customers connected, they have an advantage that will take dramatic regulatory actions to counteract. DT now has such a commanding presence they were able to raise prices, which of course should be the worst result Mathias Kurth could want. Instead, he should seek to bring down consumer costs by reducing CLEC costs, and far beyond the usual range of likely prices. Christof Sommerberg of QSC writes the changes that would help his company are low line tariffs, efficient electronic access to OSS, low connection charges, inexpensive leased lines to the CO, and low collocation charges. If RegTP doesn't want a permanent monopoly, fast and strong action is needed. ** The DSLAM that fits everywhere. ADTRAN's compact, temperature-hardened Total Access DSLAM is POWERFUL enough for the central office, TOUGH enough for the remote terminal. A versatile, six-inch chassis supports central office, new remote terminal, and existing remote terminal, and multi-tenant equipment installations. This temperature-hardened equipment has been tested and proven to operate reliably in harsh, external conditions making Total Access DSLAM the perfect choice for distributed environments. For a free application overview, http://www.adtran.com/dslp111901 (ad) Chambers, Benhamou, Intel want 100 meg to every home Refuse to back Tauzin-Dingell despite pressure "Broadband should be a national imperative for this country in the 21st Century, just like putting a man on the moon was an imperative in the last century." John Chambers of Cisco. ADSL and cable modems aren't fast enough for America's future, a dozen of America's smartest CEOs announced through Technet. We need ubiquitous broadband, fast enough for multiple video streams, to allow telemedicine, work at home, granny cams, unlimited music, and everything else the Internet can deliver. The companies spoke up because their own sales require breaking down obstacles to Internet speed. This will require fiber to the home or the curb, and an investment of about $10B a year for a decade to dig up the streets. A lot of money, but a pittance compared to the economic benefits, making it smart public policy. At Supernet, FCC Commissioner Kevin Martin has already jumped on the bandwagon. 'The FCC in the past viewed broadband in a way that is too slow." "A battle of the past" the country's top CEOs called Tauzin-Dingell. ""It's hard to find any significant impact it would have on the grow-out of technology " Key telco CEOs have personally lobbied committee members, and SBC and Verizon are among Cisco's largest customers. But they would go no further than speak generally against regulations. The committee included John Chambers of Cisco, John Doerr, Eric Benhamou of 3Com, John Young of Hewlett Packard; Les Vadasz of Intel, Microsoft COO Bob Herbold, and others. Martin's comment puts him strongly against Tauzin-Dingell, although he wouldn't say so directly, because T-D defines broadband as "usually more than 375K" in one direction, far less than the video speeds Martin is speaking about. "The Third Internet is fast enough to watch - and it's ready to deliver", I've been shouting for years, essentially the same message. Perhaps these CEOs, and the engineers like David Reed of the recent NRC report, will get the word out more effectively than I have. ** Eliminate your truck rolls. Increase your profitability. Read Paradyne's new whitepapers to learn how to overcome poor copper conditions, interference and bad premises wiring. Get them now at http://www.paradyne.com/cgi-bin/return?url=page01dslpwps.pl (ad) Independents lagging, Covad flat Competence alone not enough to beat telcos "How much is the industry down lately" asked a top East Coast ISP. Not at all, I replied, and the next day Verizon reported doubling their DSL installs. Verizon also is running ads for business DSL. As the telcos solve their operational problems, they lose fewer customers to the competition. Covad's numbers (virtually no net adds for the quarter) confirm that trend. Their financials are improving, with a burn rate down to $20M/month and $290M in cash on hand. DSL Prime has chosen Chuck McMinn as "Man of the Year" for bringing Covad through the bankruptcy process and giving them a great chance to recover. Their operation continues the most efficient in the U.S., and now they no longer have to contend with their customer's fear of dealing with a bankrupt firm. But the bells have improved as well, so all independents will need new ideas. ** NetFlare from Teradyne can reduce customer support costs up to 65%. In less than two minutes, you can verify QOS and isolate any source of congestion. NetFlare identifies the owner of network problems and determines if the DSL provider service commitment is met, Requires no measurement boxes in every exchange or software in the customer's PC. Full product description and actual field results at http://www.teradyne.com/prods/btd/netflare.html (ad) Alcatel 7300 is ready for IP video Multicasting, multisystem control, Redback challenger The 7300 is by far the bestselling DSLAM in the world. Alcatel is now delivering many of the IP functions that have long been the strong points of Cisco and Copper Mountain, including substantial system management capabilities that perform most of the key Redback functions. Alcatel's new line cards double the density, theoretically up to 1,296 lines per 12 inch rack. It can also control (subtend) the older Alcatel 1000 DSLAMs that are the bulk of the U.S. deployment, in effect upgrading the capabilities of all the units in the CO. The latest customer for the 7300 is Canada's Telus, once a Newbridge customer. They've passed 200,000 lines, and CEO Nicolas Dufourcq said the company would "promote (the) widespread take-up of broadband services" during 2002, looking to double subscribers counts. Telus is not as far along as Bell Canada with video plans, but the new equipment has that capability. Alcatel is supporting that future strongly as well, including appointing a new vice-president. ** The Electronic Frontier Foundation protects rights and promotes freedom on the Internet. Your donation supporting EFF's work will make a crucial difference. https://www.eff.org/support/donate-cc.html (psa) Catena raises $75M, Gluon $50M "It was a painful process, but we made it, and the big round takes away future uncertainties." Gluon's Rob Avery told The Daily Deal. George Hawley of Gluon has a track record that should allow to get money from any VC for the asking: Bellcore lead, DSC when they developed the NGDLC, Diamond Lane DSLAMs (sold to Nokia) and more. Instead, it took 80 meetings to produce the money that should bring Gluon's very interesting "does everything" product to market. Catena's Steve Bauer reports that Frontier and Citizens are already delivering DSL using Catena's linecard in Lucent SLC DLCs. (Who said DLC customers can't get DSL?) Over ten million customers behind SLC-5's can be upgraded in less than half a day. One card needs to be installed for ATM switching, traffic management and network interface, then as many 2 POTS + 2 DSL cards as necessary for actual customer demand. They take the same space as the traditional voice only cards. They've also delivered their Broadband Loop Carrier to Frontier for testing. Gary Morgenthaler and Seligman led the round. The industry wants to help you DSL Forum and other ways of getting information My email is extraordinary lately. An Asian CEO is building the first DSL network in his country, and wants advice on DSLAM selection. A telco planner is reviewing numbers on a large DLC deployment, and wondered if I could introduce him to someone at another telco whose experience might be helpful. I'm flattered and help as best I can, and often have the right contacts. Cutting travel budgets and money for trade organizations seems Cutting travel budgets and money for trade organizations seems to effecting the informal networks that generally provide support, unfortunately. The DSL Forum is building a Service Provider Action Council, an ideal way to look for help from your peers. Nearly all the telcos are already members, and the Forum's Laurie Gonzalez will put you in touch if you email her at lgonzalez@dslforum.org. The group will tee up critical issues and obstacles that service providers are facing, and share best practices to assist in advancing the industry. The Forum now has members in 34 countries, and is actively reaching out around the world. The T1E1.4 standards committee brings together some of the best technical people in the industry, who freely share ideas. Companies are often reluctant to send employees for standards meetings, but it's a great way for your people learn from others, and make contacts for the future. http://www.t1.org/t1e1/_e14home.htm Massimo Sorbara of Globespan is the chair, and Tom Starr of SBC Vice-chair. Expect a similar warm welcome from the ETSI TM6 group in Europe chaired by Manfred Gindel, and the international ITU SG15-Q4 group chaired by Dick Stuart. I'm sure they'll point you to some of the best resources, in the committee and around the world. The papers submitted to T1E1.4 are the richest technical collection in the industry; they come as a CD-ROM included in Starr, Silverman and Cioffi's book Understanding Digital Subscriber Line Technology, which should be on the shelf of every engineer in the industry. I go to as many conventions as practical, both for the sessions and to build contacts. The next DSL Forum conference is in Rome in March, and the entire industry comes together in a very productive (members only) meeting. The largest open conferences are the DSLCons, in San Jose in May, Hong Kong in July, D.C. in August and Munich in November. They have the most exhibitors and an excellent program organized by Peter Meade. The IEC DSL ComForums were outstanding in 2001. I hope to go to one in Berlin in the fall. The industry doesn't connect effectively with academia, unfortunately, and misses some very interesting ideas. One link I suggest everyone follow is http://www.tprc.org/tprc01/agenda01.htm where you'll find the papers from the last Telecommunications Policy Research Conference. Some are esoteric, but others useful and fascinating, and my experience is that academics are very responsive if you email them for followup. Their next session is Sept. 28-30th in Virginia, and their website has links to other academic contacts. Overwhelmingly, people are generous with time and information when you ask for help. Don't be shy about getting involved. Correction
DSL Prime - the trade paper of an Internet community
"The phone companies discovered you couldn't train 10,000 installers or build a network to serve millions as quickly as they thought," Dave Burstein in the New York Times, explaining the past problems of the telcos. Now, those problems are mostly solved, while Germany, Japan, and Korea are moving three times faster than the U.S. It's time to remind Ed Whitacre that he promised in his last annual report "SBC will make broadband transport service and applications available to nearly 100 percent of our wireline metro-area customers by 2003". Some else please whisper to Ivan Seidenberg he projected "90% coverage" in 2002. Remind them also they promised to bring the price back down. Meanwhile, others are investing despite the capex shortage. Worldcom offered nearly $20M to buy into the wholesale DSL business of three ISPs. Betsy Bernard of AT&T confirmed the NorthPoint COs will be re-lit, and AOL and MSN are playing a role in BellSouth's growth. Everest got funded. Things are looking up. Four companies responded to our free job posting offer. TI wants engineers, Garnet a US rep, AFC a project manager, and a respected ISP a COO. Details at end. Happy to help, especially as Verizon displaces 7,000 people. ** Texas Instruments introduces the highest "true" density ADSL solution in the industry. The new AC6 ADSL CO chipset allows manufacturers to cost effectively increase the number of subscriber lines while providing the lowest power consumption in the smallest area, producing a greater overall line card channel density than competitive solutions. With tightly integrated analog and RBOM components and a total systems approach to incorporate advanced power management and board level integration, AC6 delivers world-class dependability, deployability and performance. www.ti.com/sc/ac6 (ad) Worldcom/MCI bidding for wholesale DSL Millions on the table looking for deals Internet Connect's auction in bankruptcy went over $7M because investors were available who were counting on funding from Worldcom to rebuild the business. Two other major ISPs have offers from Worldcom with financial incentives well into the $millions. Worldcom is supporting nearly a thousand COs acquired from Rhythms, with high fixed costs and low variable costs per customer. It therefore makes good business sense to load on the volume, and they are bidding aggressively to get business customers in wholesale deals. I'm disappointed that Worldcom did not provide us with information for this story, which always makes us wonder what they are hiding. MCI announced in 1999 and Bernie Ebbers confirmed the next year they would be major players in DSL, but didn't follow through. They worked closely with Rhythms from the beginning, including designing the Rhythms network to fit with theirs, and promising to deliver 100,000 customers to Rhythms. They almost bought Rhythms when the price was in the $B's, holding back only because their balance sheet could no longer support the debt. Covad bids around $1,000/customer for Internet Connect Internet Connect has 9,000 business customers and expected positive cash flow in months. Internet Connect had run through as much as $70M building that customer base, but now was running much leaner. They were ready to emerge from bankruptcy, and were entertaining offers from MCI to switch customers over backed with substantial cash. Most ISPs (or their creditors) received little or nothing for their expensively developed customer base, as Covad shut down some and moved aggressively in bankruptcy against others. If Covad only retains 75% of the customers (not implausible, since many have been sold VPN features not supported by Covad directly), they will have spent $1,000 for each customer. Covad bought only the assets and is not keeping employees, so IC salesmen are already trying to pull accounts away. McMinn and Knowling both have told us that Covad had learned not to overbid to drive up customer counts, a poor strategy now that the market wants earnings. But if MCI persists (or Sprint/AT&T jumps in), Covad may have some hard decisions. One of their largest ISPs commented last week Covad has been an excellent partner, but "perhaps plays too much hardball." Martha Sessums looks at the price differently. "Covad considers the purchase to be a much broader deal than just purchasing subs. Covad bought the assets of InternetConnect, which include customer data, customer leads, the VPN customers, the OSS and source code, intellectual property, trademark and all rights to use the trademark, cash on hand, accounts receivable, prepaid deposits, credits with vendors, unencumbered network equipment along with the subs. Also, Covad considers this an integration deal -- we bought the DSL operation including service, billing and support and will use the resources to build up the business. With all these assets included in the purchase price, Covad actually paid in the ballpark of what it has paid for lines in the past. " If other than financial assets had that substantial a value, I believe Covad would have kept many of the employees responsible for them, however. The deal may prove unique, however, and I wouldn't extrapolate the price to other contexts. We're not in dot.com boom time, anymore. ** The DSLAM that fits everywhere. ADTRAN's compact, temperature-hardened Total Access DSLAM is POWERFUL enough for the central office, TOUGH enough for the remote terminal. A versatile, six-inch chassis supports central office, new remote terminal, and existing remote terminal, and multi-tenant equipment installations. This temperature-hardened equipment has been tested and proven to operate reliably in harsh, external conditions making Total Access DSLAM the perfect choice for distributed environments. For a free application overview, http://www.adtran.com/dslp111901 (ad) AOL's missing 2,000,000 Must do DSL to avoid further losses One-third of the American Internet is AOL, implying millions of the 10M new broadband users would otherwise be AOL customers. DSL has become a standard AOL product, and they were a major part of the 30,000 new lines BellSouth provided last quarter through ISPs. AOL's numbers are still in the tens of thousands, compared to the hundreds of thousands at Earthlink. Saul Hansell in the NY Times reviewed some of the key issues of cable compared to DSL in the U.S. He quoted Earthlink's Gary Betty that "Customers don't care if it's cable or D.S.L." Hansell also picked up my similar thought "A good cable company is better than a bad D.S.L. company, and a good D.S.L. service better than a bad cable service. It's not the technology, but the company." Betty added the telco's high prices for wholesale DSL mean "I can make more money on cable." That shouldn't be surprising; DSL Prime reported that the U.S. telco wholesale price for the DSL service alone is higher than the retail price in Canada that includes ISP service and support. The Times reported a Yankee Group survey, in which more than 50 percent of users said they had no preference between cable and D.S.L. But the survey found that interest dropped sharply as the price rose. While the telcos have been wallowing in operational problems, a high price to reduce demand might have made sense. But those times are past, and now the companies want and need the volume. ** NetFlare from Teradyne can reduce customer support costs up to 65%. In less than two minutes, you can verify QOS and isolate any source of congestion. NetFlare identifies the owner of network problems and determines if the DSL provider service commitment is met, Requires no measurement boxes in every exchange or software in the customer's PC. Full product description and actual field results at http://www.teradyne.com/prods/btd/netflare.html (ad) Lucent wins big in France Every vendor in Europe has been fighting to become the new supplier to FT, knowing that Poland, Algeria, and others were likely to follow along. CEOs from around the world have been converging on Paris, and not just for the chocolate tarts. Asian vendors offered remarkable pricing, while major Europeans involved their governments in the promotion. Lucent has a complete line, including hardened field units and small DSLAMs appropriate for rural territories, important to FT's plan to wire the entire country. Lucent's Stinger has the bandwidth for video, including the ability today to connect 4 OC-3's. Stingers at Germany's QSC are doing European standard VoDSL. DSL Prime previously reported FT has been planning for video for years, and has voice in their future. Bruce Miller of Lucent told us Lucent is expecting a North America win based on ability to deliver IP video. Meanwhile, the FT win gives them momentum in Portugal, Spain, and Argentina. Most bids came in at $100 or a little above per DSLAM port, and presumably Lucent had to give an attractive price to win the contract. Even after that discount, FT is presumably paying substantially more than the $65/port Marconi is said to have bid in Italy - a contract Marconi does not want to fulfill. Alcatel will continue a major supplier to FT, but some speculate their role in France will be much less. Siemens and Alcatel are alternate suppliers in DT Germany, ECI's other key customer. Incoming Chairman David Ball has a new $50M investment to support ECI's future plans. ECI's Pinny Chaviv emailed "ECI expects to continue as a major supplier of DSL equipment to both FT & DT, with whom we have strong relationships." Stinger getting 72 port Centillium-based board The 14 slots in the Stinger chassis will be able to support a thousand ADSL connections, the kind of density telco deployments are requiring. Cody Acree of Frost Securities broke the story. Centillium has had amazing success in Japan, but this is their biggest win in the West. ** Eliminate your truck rolls. Increase your profitability. Read Paradyne's new whitepapers to learn how to overcome poor copper conditions, interference and bad premises wiring. Get them now at http://www.paradyne.com/cgi-bin/return?url=page01dslpwps.pl (ad) BellSouth blows past other telcos 70% Coverage, quality key to best U.S. results (157K) While other telcos make noise in D.C., BellSouth proved DSL is a popular, practical, and profitable service, letting Ralph de la Vega exit on a high note. (Next BellSouth problem he has to turn around is Latin America.) The entire project is planned for profitability, with free cash flow expected in 2003. Besides active promotion (free modem and month's service), the key to the quarter was the power of increased coverage area. BellSouth moved from 60% to 70% coverage, as they installed hardened DSLAMs in and next to remote terminals. 39% of their customers are served from such field units, and now half of those have been upgraded. 1,000 have been upgraded in North Carolina alone. One-seventh of BellSouth coverage was new this quarter, which proportionately could be as many as 88,000 of the 157,000. (one-seventh of 620K) Ratings on DSL Reports confirm BellSouth's claims that their service is better than other telcos. ISPs tell me BellSouth's wholesale division is supportive, not like others that just go through the motions. This meant that the ISP sales growth rose in similar proportion, although ISP sales (including AOL, Earthlink, and MSN) are still only 20%. De la Vega announced they will expand coverage to 76% in 2002, so new territory will be a lesser factor going forward. That's one reason he only predicts 500,000 new subs this year, including a slowdown in Q1. De la Vega sees a strong seasonal pattern as well, with strong orders Q4 along with holiday purchases. They're looking at wireless to serve some of the remaining 24%, where DSL distances are less practical. Verizon: "We've turned the corner" 225K net adds in Q4 They said they were going to do 225K (nearly doubling), promoted a $29.95 three month deal, and with a holiday season boost, met that goal. Verizon execs should be much happier opening their newspapers in the morning - no more "Night of the Living DSL" horror stories splashed across the Times. Verizon provisioning times are much shorter, although they don't report average install times. What next for Verizon? Both Verizon and SBC have the technical capability to light 200,000-400,000 new subscribers per month, similar to the rates in Germany and Japan. Seidenberg less than two years ago announced Bell Atlantic would cover 90% of lines for DSL in 2002, and GTE had planned 85%. They're stuck around 60%, despite clear economics that would make profitable deploying to the other COs and many remotes. That's key to BellSouth's results, gaining proportionately twice as many customers. Now that operations are under control, costs are plummeting dramatically, and they will continue to go down with volume. ** The Electronic Frontier Foundation protects rights and promotes freedom on the Internet. Your donation supporting EFF's work will make a crucial difference. https://www.eff.org/support/donate-cc.html (psa) Come to New York! Government funds could build the best network in the world Verizon should build the network of everyone's dreams downtown, to follow on their remarkable work after 9/11. For a decade, everyone (including the telco) has proclaimed that fiber is the future of networks - the rebuilding is so extensive, let's do it right. Manhattan can and should be the showcase of the Verizon network - after all, it's the most lucrative telecom market in the world. A priority for the $700M in federal money is infrastructure rebuilding, and I believe many companies can help build state-of-the-art services. MFN, Telseon, Cogent, and Yipes can deliver gig-e architecture, and I hope other creative companies jump right in. John Cioffi has been proclaiming that VDSL has significant advantages over fiber, and the short distances in Manhattan would be a great place to prove that idea. Loan terms are unusually generous, and specifically makes loans available to companies "that currently lack access to suitable credit." The greatest concentration of Internet traffic in the world is downtown, so it has always been a natural location for communications interchange and operations. National companies - even those not currently active in Manhattan - are encouraged to apply for government funds to invest downtown. I'd welcome emails (dave@dslprime.com) from folks getting involved. I was born in New York, and am still here. VoDSL delivering Polycom shipping thousands each month DSL Prime made a mistake last issue. Accelerated is selling CPE to QSC in Germany, but the voice IADs are from the team of Lucent and Polycom. Keith Beckwith tells me they're (finally) seeing significant demand for voice IADs, with several customers purchasing in the thousands of units. They sold $15M worth in three quarters. Adtran is delivering to Mpower, and sees increasing volume from the product. Every RFP for DSLAMs includes the requirement of support for VoDSL. Hanaro in Korea is expected soon to move as well, probably with a domestic supplier. Manish Gupta believes worldwide deployments will become significant this year and accelerate in 2003. He wrote a short article for DSL Prime, with a look at which countries and companies are likely to become leaders. For VoDSL Primetime in 2002? click Briefs:
DSP SW Engineers Develop DSL chipsets. SW architecture development and specification, implementation of DSL algorithms and features on TI DSP based platforms. Lab based testing and integration with other DSL modem components. Experience with C and digital communications applications. SW Design Engineers Embedded system SW development, including data communications (ADSL), embedded OS interface & services, & hardware device drivers. Involved in Physical layer protocols, system solutions and ATUR vender interoperability. Knowledge of OA&M & ADSL. Programming in C. Respond to Cheri@TI.com for any of these jobs
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