to all,
lastest on pac bell's service. seem a little high for me but will compete against ahome. also sounds like service isn't that good based on previous isdn line installation. maybe we can get some positive feedback with the adsl installation.
gw
Pac Bell debuts FasTrack service
Selected cities offered higher-speed access to Net, networks
Published: Nov. 13, 1997
BY JON HEALEY
Mercury News Staff Writer
Pacific Bell today will launch a long-awaited service to boost the performance of
its phone lines, giving customers in selected Bay Area communities high-speed
access to the Internet and corporate computer networks.
The service, based on so-called asymmetric digital subscriber line (DSL)
technology, is three to 10 times as fast as ISDN, Pac Bell's other high-speed
service. But it may be slower and is far more expensive than the services gradually
being introduced by Tele-Communications Inc., the Bay Area's dominant cable
company.
A handful of entrepreneurial phone companies are expected to launch their own
DSL offerings in the Bay Area, too, and a number of high-speed wireless
alternatives are on their way. But Pac Bell has a head start on the competition, in
part because the company thwarted other firms' efforts to offer DSL service
through the lines used by burglar alarm companies.
The driving force behind this competition is the growing hunger for bandwidth --
the capacity to transport information to and from computers around the globe.
The demand for bandwidth is climbing fast as the Internet becomes a prime
conduit for entertainment and commerce, more companies rely on workers
outside their offices, and the increasingly global economy requires more
information to be transported electronically.
In this competition -- involving at least six different technologies -- the deciding
points for consumers will be price, speed, reliability and availability.
The Pac Bell service, dubbed FasTrack DSL, is too expensive to be practical for
a casual Internet user. The main appeal will be to small to mid-sized businesses
that want fast Internet access or that move large amounts of data in and out of
their networks -- to telecommuting employees, for example, or to subcontractors.
In light of the competition to come, Pac Bell will have to do a better job on
FasTrack DSL's customer service than it has done with ISDN. Consumers
complain that the ISDN service from Pac Bell has been plagued by long waits for
installation and unreliable performance.
DSL vastly increases the capacity and speed of ordinary phone lines by using
special equipment at the customer's premises and Pac Bell's central offices. This
equipment transmits data at frequencies above those used for ordinary phone
conversations, allowing users to surf the Internet and make phone calls
simultaneously over a single line.
The main problem with DSL and related services is that they require a certain type
of copper line to work, and not every customer has that kind of line. Indeed, the
newest buildings and housing developments often boast fiber-optic cables in lieu
of copper wires.
The technology will not work on phone lines more than about 2 1/2 miles from a
Pac Bell central office, said Paula Reinman, Pac Bell's marketing director for DSL
service. The lines also have to be free of signal-processing equipment, such as the
load coils used to amplify voices, Reinman said.
Pac Bell estimates that 65 percent of the customers in the areas selected for the
FasTrack DSL launch will be able to sign up for the service. Those areas are
parts of Danville, San Ramon, San Jose, Burlingame, Los Altos, Mountain View,
Palo Alto, Redwood City, Santa Clara and Sunnyvale. Residents of these cities
can call Pac Bell to find out if their phone lines can support the new service.
So far, TCI and its high-speed Internet affiliate, @Home Corp., have launched
their cable-modem service only in Fremont and parts of Sunnyvale. But Andrew
Johnson, a TCI spokesman, said, ''I think you will see an aggressive deployment
of the @Home product (in the Bay Area) between now and the end of the year.''
Before TCI and @Home can begin service in a community, TCI has to upgrade
its network to provide a two-way path shielded from electronic interference -- no
small task. By contrast, Pac Bell can offer DSL service over its existing wires.
Although the theoretical top speed of @Home's service is up to three times faster
than Pac Bell's DSL service, in practice the speed can decline as more users sign
on.
The Pac Bell DSL service will initially be available in two speeds: 384 kilobits per
second (Kbps) when subscribers send or receive data, or 1.5 megabits per
second (Mbps) when receiving and 384 Kbps when sending. The maximum
speed depends on the subscriber's distance from a Pac Bell central office. Those
rates are seven to 27 times as fast as a conventional modem's rates.
Pac Bell's fees will range from $80 to $250 per month, plus installation fees.
Customers using the service to connect to the Internet rather than a corporate
network will also have to pay $95 per month to Concentric Network Corp. of
Cupertino, the only Internet service provider offering the service at this point.
Installation will take about 10 days, Reinman said, adding that Pac Bell had set up
a special team to handle orders.
The DSL technology is several years old, yet it has been slow to reach the market
despite the growing demand for higher-speed access to the Internet. Several
companies across the country, including one in Laguna Beach, have been offering
DSL service over the copper lines that phone companies lease to burglar-alarm
monitoring companies, but Pac Bell has not allowed that tactic in its territory, said
Russ Teasdale of InterNex Information Services Inc., a Santa Clara Internet
service provider.
Nevertheless, Teasdale said, at least two entrepreneurial phone companies are
preparing to jump into the DSL business in competition with Pac Bell. InterNex,
meanwhile, is preparing to offer a DSL service in conjunction with Pac Bell.
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