ay 27, 1997 10:00 AM ET
Study: DSL is a farfetched
'dream'
By Scott Berinato
A predictable backlash against the hype of DSL has
been brewing, but a new report on digital subscriber
line technology to be released next week may bring that
recoil to a boil.
"DSL: Field of Dreams," a study by David Cooperstein,
an analyst at Forrester Research Inc., in Cambridge,
Mass., warns IT managers looking for broadband
remote access that DSL and ADSL (asymmetric DSL)
technologies are a long way off.
"The demand will not be there on the business side, the
telcos can't get it together, there's no standard yet and,
even though Bell Atlantic announced plans to roll out
service, I sense it's not a firm commitment,"
Cooperstein said, ticking off reasons for his very
conservative conclusion on DSL line installations.
Forrester estimates the market for ADSL will only
reach a quarter million lines by 2001.
But the number of remote users is growing. And users,
many of whom use 28.8K-bps analog modem
connections, are demanding more bandwidth.
Eleven percent of all U.S. corporations had 50 or more
telecommuters in 1995. That figure jumped to 24
percent in 1996, according to the report.
Even though he needs the bandwidth, user Jeff
Hartweg is not buying into ADSL just yet.
"Companies say, 'Yeah, we're going to jump on
things--but it's nonstandard, and it's a risk to the whole
network architecture,'" said Hartweg, global network
architect for GE Capital Auto Financial Services Inc., in
Barrington, Ill.
Instead of DSL, telecommuters will adopt
standards-based 56K-bps modems and possibly bond
two or more of these lines together for even higher
throughput, Cooperstein predicts. For remote offices
connecting via T-1 lines, they will "keep chugging with
inverse multiplexers." |
