ADSL News, Check it out !
More fast lanes lead to Net
By Jeff Pelline
January 22, 1997, 8:30 p.m. PT
After years of talk, phone and cable
companies are now ready to offer some real
choices for high-speed Internet connections.
The market for fast online access is still minuscule
and faces substantial marketing and pricing
hurdles, but the moneymaking potential created by
the explosive growth of the Net is too much for
these companies to ignore.
Consumers will be the beneficiaries of this fierce
competition, but they will have to choose between
the substantially different technologies offered by
the phone and cable firms. It is just about time for
users to start calculating which are the better deals.
Today, cable giant Time Warner announced that it
would enter the California market by providing
cable modem service in San Diego starting
February 6. Sources said the company will charge
$44.95 a month for the service to existing cable
subscribers and $49.95 a month to those who
don't already have cable service.
San Diego is the third--but the biggest--market
where Time Warner has launched its service,
which uses cable lines to download Internet
information at 10 mpbs, 1,000 times faster than
today's standard modems. By year's end, the
company will add ten more markets--likely
including Texas and Florida--and hopes to be
installed in 3.5 million homes.
@Home, jointly owned by Tele-Communications
Incorporated, Cox Communications, and
Comcast, is also rolling out its own brand of cable
modem access nationwide and is beefing up the
service to offer live chat sessions and other
features.
But while they try to figure out how to enter this
new arena, financial pressures at cable TV giants
such as TCI are making the costly network
upgrades more difficult.
On top of that, competition for customers will be
stiff. Just this week, two Baby Bells--Pacific Bell
and Bell Atlantic--said they are gearing up for the
launch of a competing service.
High-speed ADSL (asymetric digital subscriber
line) connections run over regular phone lines and
move information at 1.5 mbps, considerably
slower than cable modems. On the other hand, an
ADSL connection could be used for data
connections and voice service simultaneously.
"The battle between cable and telcos for Internet
access is heating up now," said Wen Liao, an
analyst for Jupiter Communications. "We're
starting to see more cable deployment."
Pac Bell said it would roll out its ADSL service in
September, first in Silicon Valley and then
throughout the rest of California. Bell Atlantic will
begin its trial on the East Coast in six weeks and
will deploy for real in an as-yet unspecified major
city by fall.
Bell Atlantic chief executive Raymond Smith this
week called 1997 "the Year of ADSL."
But the technology faces roadblocks, both on the
regulatory and pricing front. Pacific Bell, for
example, has suggested charging at least $100 per
month for ADSL.
"Pricing is the main problem," Liao agreed. "On
the other hand, the technology is a good one for
the telcos, because they also can deploy voice
over the same line."
The big loser in this scenario, according to
analysts, is ISDN--a competing high-speed Net
access technology that has gained ground slowly
over the past several years but has always been a
source of complaints about difficult installations
and fluctuating fees. This week, Pac Bell president
David Dorman stressed that he would push his
customers toward ADSL, not ISDN. |
