[CRTC]
Richard --
I've followed the CRTC fairly closely and will check your post to see what I've missed.
I was pleased with the wording on the BC page regarding the two vendors. If Alcatel isn't sending DSLAMs until mid-'98, then Westell has a nice lead and if ALA slips, perhaps the combined company can step in for DMT, too. I maintain that Newbridge and even Nortel will not concede BC to Alcatel without fighting for their share.
I've spent a little over an hour studying Siemens' aDSL listings on their website and am impressed with the strength of their committment to the technology.
For your enjoyment:
siemens.de
<<< Press Release: Munich, October 17, 1997
The world's most successful digital telephone switching system from Siemens: 150 million digital telephone lines in use in 100 countries (trade press)
Fit for the next millennium with EWSD innovations
On Friday 17.10.97 Siemens Public Communications Networks Group, Munich installed the 150 millionth line of its EWSD telephone switching system (EWSD - Elektronisches W„hlsystem, Digital - Digital Electronic Switching System). This makes EWSD the most successful digital switching system in the world. EWSD is used in 100 countries. Europe, with 78 million, has the most lines installed, followed by Asia with 42 million, America with 21 million and Africa with 9 million. In 1996 Siemens' turnover from EWSD came to around DM 8.5 billion, making the system the market leader. The great need for modernizing the telecommunications infrastructure and for new services in Asia, South America and Central and Eastern Europe means that turnover can be expected to rise even further in the future. . . .
The driving forces behind this upswing are the new telecommunications services such as ISDN, online services and wideband services with bitrates of up to 2 Mbit/s. . . .
EWSD InterNode Traffic in the Internet is growing at around 700% per year. No other telecommunications segment is growing as uickly as this. Applications such as the World Wide Web (WWW) and e-mail are fueling the growth.
The EWSD Internode connects the Internet to the telephone network. A Point of Presence (POP) integrated into EWSD allows carriers to offer their customers direct access to data highways. ADSL and MFSM provide broadband links for subscribers.
The interaction between POP and EWSD will make entirely new services possible, for example call waiting indication during an Internet session. . . .>>>
Telecom ADSL article:
siemens.de
<<< The ADSL procedure must be able to cope with the vast variety of conditions found on existing lines, i.e. different lengths, different line quality, and exposure to a wide variety of external conditions, such as radio transmitter interference. For XpressLink D, Siemens is collaborating with Amati Communications, a California-based company which co-founded the ADSL DMT (discrete multitone) standard. By combining Siemens' experience in public networks (e.g. ATM, management systems, access technologies) with Amati's expertise in ADSL, our joint development efforts make these new technologies usable for network operators. . . . >>>
Siemens' three-part strategy for meeting Internet capacity needs:
siemens.de
Siemens' bandwidth solutions (note mention of Bells):
siemens.de
<<< What will happen in the future? If we take the deep fiber [close to the subscriber] and add new technologies like ADSL and VDSL [asymmetric and very high bit rate digital subscriber line], we can offer broadband services. We'll begin using more and more of that fiber bandwidth with the new technologies that come. This is just around the corner. This is next year. . . .
Our new broadband products like XpressLink D can help us pull Internet traffic out of the switch and into an ATM network, effectively bypassing parts of the voice network. We'll have our first beta sites by the end of this year, and we'll begin shipping serious volumes in spring 1998. This is an ideal product for customers with lots of twisted pair and lots of switches. Many are fully digitized and now are looking for the next step. Our lead customers are Deutsche Telekom, Telebras in Brazil, France Telecom, Belgacom, and every Bell Operating Company in the US.
Will you be selling directly to household customers in the future?
This could happen sooner than many people think - perhaps within the next two years. If so, we would follow the example of Siemens Communication Terminals division and market via major retailers. Of course, we would also look to the Internet as a sales channel.
What kind of new access products and technologies can we expect in the future ?
A little farther down the road, we see things like fiber to the home, meaning no copper or just 10 meters inside the house. This will, of course, offer subscribers tremendous bandwidth. For example, each person could have a card - an electronic piece - which is non-shared media for all the communication needs. We're approaching the death of speed. And there is one thing that won't change over the next few years - your eyes. They can only follow things at a certain speed. The pipe coming into your home has enough coded information to satisfy your eyes' capability. The real processing component at the end of the bit stream is not the PC, but your eyes. . . .
What is Siemens' major strength in the market ?
Our single most important strength in access worldwide is our sales - our point of presence with customers. Our second great strength is that none of our products suffer from the "not invented here" syndrome. We use anything that's good. We use the same identical chip set and firmware in our fiber-copper system and in our line cards that is used in EWSD, giving us immense economies of scale. We ride the volume scale of EWSD, gaining stability from the fact that the chip set gets installed 25 million times a year. And all the line cards work in 100 countries worldwide. When we plug it in, it works and we don't have to redo the firmware because EWSD was installed ahead of it. And the same is true for our DECT systems. It's all about reducing cost, risk, and time. >>>
The author of the following article has recently been assigned to direct Siemens' Business development for the Access Networks/ Public Communications Group and will be headquartered in Santa Clara, CA. (Next door to San Jose.)
siemens.de
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