Dwight/Eric:
Just to add some hard facts to this thread, from the Business Director
[David Mayes/Ascend] responsible for the K56flex roll-out:
All Ascend production 56K modem cards for MAX family of remote access
concentrators, implement only the firmware upgradable K56Flex technology.
Ascend has already taken delivery of a substantial quantity of these chips
and has begun production of these 56K flash memory upgradable cards. Ascend
production 56K modem cards will ship in March.
K56Flex field trials, in a large number of sites nationwide and
internationally, began in February, and should be completed shortly.
Ascend, BBN, Compaq, Lucent Technologies, Motorola, PSINet, Rockwell, and
UUNET as well as many other vendors have been actively involved.
Substantial data has been collected to date. The field trials and plans of
many K56Flex vendors will be reviewed at the Open 56K Forum event in New
York City, now scheduled for April 9.
On Friday, March 14, Motorola announced that they have temporarily
suspended shipment of their ROM-based K56Flex client modem products due to
a "quality problem" with the Rockwell ROM K56Flex chip. Motorola stated
that they are working "cooperatively" with Rockwell to correct the problem
and resume shipments as soon as possible. Motorola and other client modem
manufacturers elected to ship their products early using ROM-based Rockwell
chips.
The problem Motorola described in no way affects Ascend's 56K product
shipment schedules. Ascend has stated consistently that it will only ship
the final RAM-based production product from Rockwell. The RAM-based
Rockwell chips are now at Ascend, our production schedules are moving ahead
as planned, and K56Flex field trials are nearly complete. |
