By ANTHONY PALAZZO
Dow Jones News Services
NEW YORK -- Boca Research Inc. (BOCI) Chief Executive Tony Zalenski said
the company won't ship faster modems in the first quarter ending Monday.
Zalenski told Dow Jones that Rockwell International Corp. (ROK)
engineers claim to have solved five of the six problems in its chip sets
for next-generation modems that promise to download data at up to 56
kilobits a second.
''There's still one problem left. That problem's still significant
enough that I won't ship,'' Zalenski said.
He said Rockwell has promised to fix the final problem, which pertains
to simultaneous voice and data transmission, or SVD, by Friday.
Meanwhile, the Boca Raton, Fla., modem maker is testing the rest of the
new coding to be programmed into the flash PROM chips that go with the
chip set.
The SVD feature isn't unique to 56k modems, Zalenski said. Boca offers
it on 33.6k modems already. He didn't know whether other modem
manufacturers plan to offer SVD.
Zalenski said even if he receives the SVD coding fix by Friday, Boca
can't possibly ship by Monday because of the labor-intensive steps
involved: testing the new code to make sure it works and doesn't cause
new problems, unwrapping previously packaged modems, taking them out of
the box and reprogramming the flash PROM, putting the modems back in the
box and shipping them.
''Every step I mentioned involves a body,'' Zalenski said. ''It's
tremendously labor and time-intensive.''
Zalenski said some revenue would be pushed out into the second quarter
by the delay in the 56k rollout. He declined to estimate how much.
''We've indicated all along that 56k wasn't going to be a significant
contributor of revenue in the first quarter just because of the lateness
in the timing of the shipments to begin with,'' said company spokeswoman
Gale Blackburn, who accompanied Zalenski on the call.
The bigger issue, Blackburn said, was ''really more what (other
products) didn't sell in the quarter because people were delaying
decisions awaiting the arrival of 56k,'' Blackburn said.
Boca announced shipment of 56k modems early this month. However,
Zalenski said once the problems were discovered the company was able to
pull all but about 20 units off the loading dock and back into the
factory.
U.S. Robotics Corp. (USRX) began shipping its 56k modems with a rival,
incompatible technology called x2 in late February. By being first to
market with x2, U.S. Robotics has placed considerable pressure on its
competitors.
Zalenski said companies who are shipping 56k modems using K56flex
technology are gambling that their customers will be able to download
any revisions or updates to the code over the Internet.
''If it's in hardware or a part of the modem that can't be fixed by
software, then you have to take that product back in'' to fix the
problem, Zalenski said. ''That's a great way to irritate your
customers.''
As reported, Hayes Microcomputer Corp. and Diamond Multimedia Systems
Inc. (DIMD) are shipping modems using K56flex. Hayes spokesman Marshall
Toplansky told The Wall Street Journal the problems are minor.
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