[Fair Article on GTE Rollout]
Greg,
The first article on the GTE rollout without a "slant". Note it
doesn't assault ADSL or AMATI/WESTELL not being ready...rather
it HONESTLTY points out the FCC regualtions GTE has to abide by.
This is why GTE split into FOUR companies when they purchsed BBN.
One of these companies is unregulated.
If Dow Jones and other media services understood this it would
certainly help in their "analysis".
I agree with an early comment "GTE does not want to telegraph" their
next move. The article implies GTE has "gone quiet".
<<
Inter@ctive WeekMay 7, 1997
GTE Expands ADSL Trial With Microsoft
By Carol Wilson
1:30 PM EDT
Although it was largely overshadowed by news of its major strategy shift and its BBN Corp.
acquisition, GTE Corp. announced a major expansion of its telephone operations unit's existing
Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line trial with Microsoft Corp. and two new trials with Duke
University in Durham, N.C., and Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind..
About 1,000 additional users will be added to the Microsoft trial, making it the largest U.S. trial of
Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line, or ADSL, for data services.
The Duke trial will test a telemedicine application for ADSL while the Purdue trial tests educational
applications, according to Barry Nalls, assistant vice president of business product management for
GTE.
Although it once predicted commercial ADSL service offerings in the first half of 1997, GTE has
now gone quiet on when it may offer commercial service, largely because of the regulatory issues.
Nalls said the company is struggling with the ways in which the Federal Communications
Commission's interconnection and collocation orders, issued in August 1996, will affect its
deployment of new technology with its regulated telephone operations.
Those orders, which GTE has challenged in federal district court, appear to require a regulated local
telephone company to resell, at a discount, any new technology it deploys for its own new services.
"It's a big issue," Nalls said. "And we don't think it's been resolved."
While waiting for that resolution, GTE may choose to use ADSL technology in either its Internet
solutions unregulated unit, its newly acquired BBN operation, or the competitive local exchange
carrier operations it recently announced plans to create.
In the meantime, Nalls said, GTE will continue to trial ADSL within the telephone operations,
particularly where it gets the chance to test new applications for the access technology, as is the case
with the Duke and Purdue trials.>>
Bob |
