There is also a good bit of good news in that article for G.Lite, plus the bad news comes from full-rate suppliers which is no surprise at all.
I found these points to be great news for G.Lite:
Some carriers, chip makers and OEMs remain firm backers of G.Lite. Service provider Northpoint Communications Inc. (San Francisco) has finished G.Lite trials in Santa Clara, Calif., and is prepared to launch a multicity G.Lite offering that involves retail sales through Tandy/Radio Shack, according to Mark Peden, director of technology strategy.
Peden, former chairman of the Universal ADSL Working Group, the ad hoc industry group that rallied behind G.Lite, said that any move to make DSL services cost-effective is a boon to the industry. That would include full-rate ADSL through microfilters, Peden said, but he believes G.Lite retains the edge in low power dissipation and interoperability across vendors.
But others are still pushing G.Lite forward, and "G.Lite is definitely going to be the accepted medium for consumers," said Kevin McClure, senior analyst for communications ICs at Dataquest Inc. (San Jose, Calif.).
Motorola Inc. also backs the splitterless standard for consumer markets. While G.Lite adoption is proceeding quickly, "not all of the central office switches have updated software; the new code has not reached all of the COs, and that has caused some delays," said Matt Nelson, G.Lite product line marketing manager for Motorola (Huntsville, Ala.). "But on the consumer side, I think it is important to note that G.Lite reached a fully interoperable standard well ahead of full-rate [ADSL], which is about a year behind."
Yet the rise of the microfilter doesn't completely collapse the G.Lite chip set market. Faraj Aalaei, vice president of marketing at Centillium Communications Inc. (Fremont, Calif.), said G.Lite line cards can be a cost-effective solution for carriers, letting them field full-rate services to customers able to pay for it, and slower chip sets for users willing to accept G.Lite's slower data rates.
"G.Lite line cards use much less power than full-rate versions, and the densities are much higher," Aalaei said. "The whole goal of G.Lite is to reduce complexity and power dissipation." |
