Pat,
The theoretical capacity of each access concentrator units is about 2000 simultaneous user connections - actually it is likely to be some multiple of 30 based on the capacity of an international E1 circuit.
XNET will deploy concentrators in each central office from which they wish to offer dial up service. Most, if not all, of these concentrators will be populated with fewer than 2000 actual modem ports at first, so the 18000 ports will be distributed over many individual concentrators.
An initial order of 18,000 ports could support more than 500,000 subscribers or as few as 100,000 depending on the characteristics of the target customer and the economics of telephone use. To wit: business oriented ISPs in the US may have as few as 5 subscribers for every dial up port, as many users camp on for hours at a time. In contrast, AOL provisions a port for approximately 15 users. In Europe, where many users must pay for local calls by the minute, ISPs may serve as many as 30 subscribers from each port.
Given the undeveloped state of Chinese language content, I would guess the Chinese will be more like the Europeans than the browser-happy Americans, but I could be wrong. |
