May 22, 1997 3:45 PM ET
First ADSL service to launch
next month
By Scott Berinato
ADSL service will become a reality in four Midwestern
cities on June 1, giving users dial-up speeds
surpassing T-1 lines over regular copper telephone
lines.
ioCom, a division of ioNet Inc., will offer asynchronous
digital subscriber line service to subscribers in Kansas
City, Mo.; Oklahoma City and Tulsa, Okla.; and Little
Rock, Ark., beginning next month.
The service will be based on U.S. Robotics Corp.'s
Carrierless Amplitude Phase (CAP)-based ADSL,
which offers 7M bps downstream and 1.5M bps on the
return path, according to ioCom officials.
The client router, USR's Viper DSL, is tentatively priced
at $495; tentative pricing for the monthly service is $95.
ioNet is a midsize Internet service provider based in
Oklahoma City with 15,000 subscribers. Currently, it
offers V.34 modem dial-up, x2 56K-bps modem dial-up
and ISDN service, as well as some T-1 services.
Although officials of ioNet expect a few consumers to
scoop up the ADSL service, a vast majority of the
service will be embraced by corporate customers, they
said.
Dual Multi-Tone, or DMT, ADSL, which is more
expensive but generally considered more robust than
CAP, will become part of the service at a later date,
officials said.
Analysts were surprised at how soon the service would
be available and how well-priced it would be.
"Pricing is extremely aggressive," said Kieran Taylor,
an analyst at TeleChoice Inc., in Verona, N.J.
"Especially for the RADSL [rate adaptive DSL] router.
And $95 per month is pretty good, especially if you're
going to use your link a lot. That's quite a compelling
rate, especially compared to T-1."
ioNet can be reached at www.ionet.net. |
