Techie,
You are definately correct, ADSL will be much easier to implement than ISDN, no SPIDS, no various flavors(national, customer, etc) no confusion. Basically ADSL will be a two ended solution in which a customer has an ADSL box at the home(whether it is owned by the customer, or by the local RBOC I dont know) and the RBOC will have an ADSL equipment rack in the Central Office that has A) a regular POTS telephone interface for the phone connection to the switch and B) an ethernet connection to connect to either an ATM or SMDS network for Internet connection to the various ISPs(I am not too sure how the Video on Demand will be implemented, or whether a third interface will be needed to connect to a video server or whether this service will migrate to the Web itself).
The intelligence of implementing the service will be with the phone company, and will not involve any customer intelligence(which ISDN has required, and due to the confusion out there has been one of the major hurdles). IT will also not be a switched solution, so there will be little that the phone company techs will need to do(once again this has been a big issue with ISDN because of its many options). Taking the service off of the switch will also do away with any usage issues that have plagued ISDN.
As a result of this(ADSL) being a RBOC service, ASND will have to position with the RBOCs for the business(at least for the Central OFfice equipment). RIght now ASND is really positioned, and has sold a boat load of equipment to the ISPs for dial up access to the net. ADSL will not be dial up access. Now, if the home unit is purchased by the end user(not owned by the service provider), then the market really opens up so that this equipment(the home unit) will be sold at circuit city or CompUSA.
Ultimately, ASND, has to get into businesses other than ISDN(which is apparent with their aquisition of NETSTAR and their interest in ADSL).
Hope this is of some help |
