Hi Bill, I see you've been surfing the fringe of future tech too.
I think Khamsin just wanted to tweak the nose of AT&T because I can't find anything else on this technology for us common folk (no web page, not phone # or address, no industry review).
With phrases like: "special materials", "highly proprietary", "new electric-signal-propagation techniques", "continuously active-path", you wonder how much they really want anyone to now what they have got.
It sounds like they will be making a copper/fiber cable, but compound cable is nothing new. The build-out cost of a new cable plant is enormous so I don't see the telcos warming up to this (ADSL will rule for a few years.) Business parks would be the best initial customer.
I can't imagine homes paying the telco for 622mbit BW.
I guess it will be a year before we know if it works...
Paul
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A Wind of Change for the Last Mile
By Gary Arlen
Contributing Curmudgeon
BroadbandWeek (7/13/98)
Exploiting promotional opportunities is the sign of a clever entrepreneur. Hence, the audacity of a high-tech start-up proclaiming that it has the solution to the AT&T/TCI last-mile problem is eye-catching.
In its well-timed, albeit obscure, Web-posted announcement, Khamsin Technologies of suburban San Diego not only piggybacks its dreams to the AT&T/TCI merger announcement, but it also offers its as-yet-untested "composite-cable" technology for "significant two-way bandwidth" that will last 100 years.
Not bad grandstanding for a small band of fiber optic technologists who are still a year away from field tests and who admit that they have not yet spoken to AT&T.
Khamsin's composite cable -- which was developed by its technology provider, New World Paradigm Ltd. -- can handle 622-megabit-per-second connections in both directions. That is four times the speed of the Internet backbone, and 62 times faster than 10-mbps cable modems.
The last-mile strand includes fiber optic lines embedded with electrical conductors made of "special materials," which Khamsin and New World decline to describe until patents are issued. They claim that their special material will last 100 years, meaning that future upgrades will not require the capital and labor expense of rewiring the last mile to handle service improvements, according to Khamsin president John Taylor.
The system uses a technology that combines synchronous-digital-hierarchy-based optical transmission with electrical distribution, and it will be compatible with all types of existing networks, explains Dr. Mitchell Cotter, CEO and chief scientific officer at Arlington, Va.-based New World. He repeatedly notes that the new materials and processes are "highly proprietary."
The dual 622-mbps system provides that high-speed connection both downstream and upstream, effectively handling more than 1 gigabit of simultaneous capacity. The system includes a switch at the home or business location for routing signals to the appropriate device. The "always-on" feature means that the system has no dialtones and no busy signals.
Taylor and Cotter emphasize that their high-speed, multipurpose connections will offer one-wire capability by simultaneously carrying a half-dozen voice lines, video and always-on Internet connections. The vast bandwidth would easily haul video-on-demand, high-definition digital TV, wideband Internet content and videophony, as well as conventional voice circuits. It could also transmit energy-management and monitoring services, which is why Khamsin says it is talking to community-owned utility cooperatives, such as ones in Palo Alto and Anaheim, Calif. Cotter notes that new electric-signal-propagation techniques make wideband performance possible without installing fiber to the home.
Khamsin and New World techies hint that they have begun conversations with potential cable and telco allies, but they offer few details about their "continuously active-path" technology.
Although Taylor admits that the composite cable will initially cost 25 percent to 33 percent more than conventional coaxial lines, he insists that the technology will pay for itself. Taylor says he is negotiating with existing fabricators (also unidentified) to manufacture the cables. Khamsin (the name was derived from an Arabic term for "wind of change") will market and license the technology.
The home market is the holy grail for Khamsin's plan, but the initial rollout is expected to be conducted in business parks, where composite cable can be used for high-speed-data access, as well as phone and TV service. The companies have spent more than five years "solving the last-mile bandwidth problem, which has been a struggle for the Baby Bells and other telecommunications companies," Cotter says.
Privately funded, the companies plan to begin lab tests of their composite cable by early 1999 and limited field rollouts by midyear. Uncharacteristic of high-tech ventures, this one appears to be run by grown-ups: Cotter admits to working on fiber optics as far back as "the late 1950s."
Cotter and Taylor pepper their comments with disdain for the telcos' current approach to upgrading the local loop. With bravado and big ambitions, they emphasize that digital-subscriber-line technologies are "designed to shore up the infirmities of the local loop."
"Even though the copper loop cannot provide broadband services to the American economy, the coming deployment of DSL is premised on the mistaken notion that there is no better economic and technical alternative to the ancient loop," according to the invective on Khamsin's Web site. "Therefore, deploying DSL will lock the country into outdated and costly stems, which will have to be replaced."
Those are fighting words -- and not very salesmanlike -- for a start-up that is trying to sell an entirely new product into the communications market.
But it may just be the kind of revolutionary thinking that truly changes the composition of the last-mile infrastructure.
I-Way Patrol columnist Gary Arlen has long awaited composite materials in telecommunications facilities, and not just in sports equipment and footwear.
Source:
multichannel.com |
