[Costs of installation]
<<<A $199 modem is suddenly expensive if I have to pay my phone company another $150 or $200 to install it. Underwriting these costs is certainly not attractive to an RBOC just so they can see T-1 business go away. >>>
I don't know anyone who's quoted a modem fee and an installation feel. Didn't PacBell lump them together? I'd have to check old posts. I do know Tom Engibous and a couple of the engineers at the DSP conference were quoting, "120/50" as the magic number: One hundred-twenty to install, fifty dollars a month after that. Anything higher will be geared to the corporate, SOHO, and high-end users. If they're (telcos) paying $400-500 per line (they'll own the equipment), it'll take nine months to cover and after that, it's gravey. And, of course, economies of scale will kick in and they'll average out their original costs over, say, 3 to 5 years.
I'm not sure how entrenched NetSpeed will become. I suppose it depends on what the big guys do --- Alcatel, Siemens, Motorola (eventually), Cisco, Nortel, Lucent, Ericsson, Ascend. . . .
In an interview about a year ago Jim Steenbergen said the industry would consolidate down to 8 or 9 players. He had to have known back then Amati would be swallowed up, though I doubt anyone thought it would happen as early as it did.
Pat
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