LET THE REVOLUTION BEGIN! - TO ALL:
Source: Inter@ctive Week
Inter@ctive Week via Individual Inc. : Ameritech Corp., BellSouth Corp., Pacific Bell and SBC Communications Inc. have issued a request for proposals that is expected to result in the first volume deployment of Asymmetric Digital subscriber Line, or ADSL, equipment.
The request for proposals calls for the four Bells to collectively deploy 62,000 to 70,000 ADSL circuits next year at a total cost of about $100 million, according to Kieran Taylor, broadband consultant with TeleChoice Inc. Bids are due in August with prototype equipment to be available in the fall.
One of the most noteworthy aspects of the request is a mandate that any nonstandard product must have at least two sources for its components, said Taylor.
Today there are two widely accepted ADSL line codes, Carrierless Amplitude Phase Modulation, or CAP, and Discrete Multitone, or DMT. In 1993, the American National Standards Institute approved DMT as the ADSL standard. But ADSL manufacturers supporting CAP continued to produce their equipment. All ADSL CAP equipment today uses chips made at a single AT&T Microelectronics foundry. But AT&T Paradyne, which created CAP and builds modems based on CAP chips, is looking for alternate foundries to meet the RFP's mandate, Taylor said. Paradyne is also working to open its CAP specification to other manufactures in an effort to cultivate alternate sources for CAP technology, Taylor added. Westell Technologies Inc., which this week announced plans to also use a DMT chip set from Motorola Inc., and Performance Telecom
already support CAP-based ADSL equipment along with Paradyne.
Other ADSL vendors include DMT-backers Amati, Aware and Orckit. Northern Telecom Inc. is also re-entering the ADSL fray with ADSL equipment that uses a proprietary line code that will likely be modified to fall into the CAP camp.
Expect to see more, larger vendors enter the ADSL fray as well, said Taylor.
"The RFP was sent to 39 companies, a very short list," he said. "But a lot of those companies didn't even have DSL plans in place. We're seeing a number of the large backbone vendors, the Cascades, the StrataComs, the Newbridges, they're all being approached by some of these smaller ADSL companies and we're likely to see a number of partnerships and memorandums of understanding emerge [between existing ADSL companies and the larger vendors]."
The request for proposals follows individual moves by several of the other Bells and GTE indicating a renewed interest in ADSL. The technology, which offers high-speed connections over existing copper wire, caught fire again as a result of the popularity of the Internet; the competitive threat of cable TV companies with their high-speed cable modem plans; and the apparent revelation that ADSL would be a good, affordable way to offer high-speed services in the near-term.
"Other [Bell companies] have issued their own RFPs, but they haven't done so on a consortium basis," said Taylor The only missing party now is Nynex, which predictably is dragging its heels on any new technology just like it did with ISDN."
Nynex, however, reports it is testing CAP technology in the lab with plans to trial the service with a Fortune 500 company at some unspecified future date.
The recent RFP by the Bell foursome follows "DSLAM" requests for proposals and quotes by separate local carriers this year for access multiplexers that would combine ADSL lines onto the Asynchronous Transfer Mode-based backbone network. Ameritech had issued an RFP and BellSouth and GTE issued separate requests for such products.
"[Those requests] were considered a fishing expedition by most. They asked for everything under the sun in terms of interfaces and protocols," said Taylor. "This new RFP is more specific."
Paula Bernier, Inter@ctive Week |
