Modem Players Meet To Discuss 56Kbps Standard
- By Grant Buckler, Newsbytes
Major makers of 56 kilobits-per-second (Kbps) modems are meeting here this week to talk
about a standard for the high-speed technology. Such a standard would bridge the divide
between the x2 design backed by 3Com Corp. and the K56flex architecture supported by
Lucent Technologies Inc. and others.
A committee of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) has been working on
standards for the high-speed pulse code modulation (PCM) modems since March.
Charlie Hartley, a spokesman for Lucent Technologies, told Newsbytes that if the current
meeting succeeds in hammering out a draft proposal, the committee will vote on that proposal
at a meeting in Geneva at the end of January, and could ratify it in September or even earlier.
Hartley added that while the ITU traditionally does not ratify a standard at the same meeting as
it votes on the draft proposal, if a draft proposal is approved in January the modem vendors
will probably begin immediately to build modems that comply with it, so modems that meet the
new standard could be on the market in February or March. Final ratification will be essentially
a formality, Hartley said, adding that, while there is definitely a meeting scheduled for
September, an earlier meeting at which the standard could be ratified is also a possibility.
The 56Kbps modems started coming to market more than a year ago, and manufacturers
quickly divided into K56flex and x2 camps. At present, a K56flex modem will not work with
an x2 modem or vice versa. As these modems achieve their top speeds only when connecting
to Internet service providers (ISPs) or online services able to support them (and then only for
downloading), customers of such services have essentially had to base their buying decisions
on which technology their ISP or online service adopted.
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