Another snipit from DSL Prime. At least we get a little good press from them:
What ever happened to voice over DSL?
Widespread deployment has been 6 months away for the last 12 months. Why?
"It works. We're doing it. Soon." Catherine Hapka of Rhythms told us last summer. But it's been a year since Cynthia Ringo was the belle of SUPERCOMM looking over the city from a rotating restaurant, and Tollbridge, Jetstream, and Coppercom were the hottest startups around. Now, the hottest VoDSL story at SUPERCOMM is the Ferrari Accelerated Networks is raffling in their booth, calling attention to their claim to have the most lines deployed. (Actually, with no hard data from the companies, it's a guess who's ahead - but we recommend you say Accelerated if you want to win the car.) No company's sales are more than a rounding error on last years' projections, and the big customers remain in trials and non-disclosure.
Progress is being made, however. TollBridge reports MPower is buying more equipment and rapidly deploying a dozen cities. Jetstream's latest model has built-in redundancy, a key customer request. General Bandwidth and Efficient will be demo'ing the new AAL2 BLES standard. Cayman will be showing an HomePNA cordless phone. Chip designs to bring down costs are well underway, and Alcatel has ILEC strategies not ready to announce.
Everyone expected some delays with new technology, but the technical problems are well in hand, according to numerous participants in the trials. Instead, operational and business difficulties still need to be solved. Provisioning and operational support are proving harder than gateway design, and all the companies are working on automated systems and partner programs. Billing and customer support, not easy for DSL companies with simple charges, is much tougher for telephony. GR303 connections are not readily available as an unbundled element, an issue the industry is looking to Washington to solve. The result is that many early enthusiasts - including the DLECs and most ISPs - are taking their time, while CLECs with strong telephony are in the catbird seat, much sought after as customers and partners. Focal is an early leader, but others are jumping in, and most think major small business sales are likely in 2000.
Residential looms as the key market, with SBC planning multiple voice lines as part of a bundle as soon as the technology is delivered at the right price. They're looking at early next year, and Alcatel's order of Centillium's new PCM chips suggest one technology they may use. Aware's VeDSL (Voice-enabled) may be lower-cost, essentially running multiple voice lines rather than full digitalization, and perhaps not needing a gateway. Look for chip support from ADI. The road's proven longer than planned, but I'd still put my money into an investment in any of the companies in this article.
Perry P. |
