Dee Jay,
Critical mass is coming fast for X2. Once the average Joe can find an X2 ISP in his area, critical mass is not far away. I agree a few weeks delay is fairly meaningless. Several months delay or a half year, however, is not.
Think of it this way:
1)USR has been shipping X2 capable modems since August '96. There are millions of them out there.
2)There will be a million X2 native modems sold in the month of March. (They're moving fast)
3)There are millions of X2 capable (Total Control) ISP ports out there. My friend is the system admin. at a small ISP and told me the X2 upgrade was a peice of cake. He had people up on X2 the day the server code shipped.
4)There are no K56FLEX ISP server ports now. None. Nada. *zip* When are they coming? You know Ascend is among the most progressive of the K56FLEX supporters, and they're not going even going to start shipping K56 ports until summer/fall '97. That means ISPs wont be able to begin upgrading until then. (and then they'll have to pay for it.)
Assuming that what I'm saying is right, how long do you think it is going to be before the K56 presence (client & server ports) equals what the X2 presence is now? I'd say about 6mo. Of course in the meantime, X2 is going to have hit critical mass.
Even if the ITU (standards weenies) come out with a third 56k standard, it is highly likely that the software upgradeable X2 client and server modems will be flashable to it for essentially zero cost. In that event USR will still have sold millions of modems, severly damaged its competitors image in the consumer modem market, and moderately/severly damaged its competitors in the ISP/WAN server market.
Let me know what you think.
Eric |
