Trey, you are right about risk/emotion,but not sure if you are on the right horse. I just thought I would drop this by.
Aust said the major barrier to getting under way has not been the technology, but rather the difficulties of working through the interconnection and line-provisioning issues with Bell Atlantic Corp., the incumbent LEC in NAS' operating territory.
Bell Atlantic, by avoiding the use of ADSL itself, has made it very difficult for other providers to qualify copper loop for the delivery of DSL services. But NAS has learned that it is possible for CLECs to put the technology to use under the most adverse local telco conditions, "if you conduct this effort through the regulatory process, and if you are willing to be persistent and patient," Aust said.
In its latest move, Bell Atlantic is creating a new set of plant records that limit DSL access to loop bundles based on anticipated future uses of the loop for other potentially interfering applications. Aust said NAS will seek to stop the telco through Federal Communications Commission intervention.
Aust said he "applauded" USWC and other carriers that are moving into ADSL and making it easier for their competitors to do likewise.
Once a carrier sets qualification parameters for ADSL -- which typically interferes with other advanced services, such as T-1 and ISDN (integrated services digital network), within the same wire bundle -- it must open those loops for access to others under the terms of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, Aust said.
Rhythms offered a contrasting view of the regulatory process as it fired up its ADSL services in San Diego, said James Greenberg, chief network officer at the CLEC.
"We've had no problem getting access to copper," he said, noting that PacBell has launched DSL services commercially in the San Francisco Bay area, and that it is about to do the same in southern California.
Rhythms, with capital funding totaling $200 million, plans to have "dense ADSL footprints" operative in 11 cities by year's end, Greenberg said. It is now deploying systems in San Diego, Los Angeles and the Bay area, and it will soon be setting up operations in Chicago, which Ameritech has targeted for DSL service by midyear.
Other cities on Rhythms' list include New York, Boston, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., Greenberg said, noting that the firm plans to be in at least 30 cities within three years.
Rhythms' management team consists of executives formerly with Sprint Corp., U S West Inc. and CompuServe.
So far, the involvement of CLECs in ADSL launches has been largely limited to start-ups, but this is about to change, said Larry Yokell, director of product development for USWC's MegaBit operation.
"Up to now, the high-profile CLECs have been conspicuous by their absence, but, judging by how we're getting hit up with CLEC-tariff issues, it looks like things are definitely heating up," he said.
Yokell, speaking at the Networld+Interop conference in Las Vegas last week, dismissed naysaying among ADSL detractors as a myopic response to start-up issues that affect any new data-access technology, whether it's 56-kbps analog or high-speed cable modems.
USWC is moving ahead with a business plan that it believes offers an appealing value proposition for end-users and a good return for itself, because "people are screaming for this stuff," Yokell said.
While it may be Christmas of 1999 before retailers are selling ADSL modems in great supplies nationwide, the move toward wide-scale support for low-cost implementation of the technology is well under way, Yokell said.
He added that USWC is already offering "splitterless" connections for the residential-level service at 256 kbps. Customers that order ADSL service in the covered territories by calling an 888 number can plug their Cisco modems directly into phone jacks, without adding any special wiring, officials said.
Beyond standards, a more troublesome issue concerning ADSL's growth is the question of interference within wire bundles. In a response to panelists at the Networld+Interop conference, Steven Powell, senior systems engineer for distributed architecture and technology at Bank of America, strongly asserted that this problem would ultimately defeat ADSL as a viable market option.
"It will never happen, because these technologies simply can't coexist, and nobody has adequate records as to what's in these wire bundles," said Powell, a former consultant with PacBell and other telcos.
Lison acknowledged that there "have been some surprises" over some PacBell links in the Bay-area-launch phase -- which is still considered a market trial, even though services are being offered commercially by several CLECs, as well as by PacBell.
"The telcos have always known that ADSL would require a thorough record of line applications, but they've been slow to build the records," Lison said.
Nonetheless, he added, the records are being compiled, and the prequalification of lines by computer has moved from a starting point of only about 30 percent of all lines at an ADSL-equipped central office to close to 60 percent. An additional percentage of lines can be qualified in any given wire bundle without the use of computers, but this must be done on a trial-and-error basis.
Bell Atlantic will do everything other than take hostages to block ADSL.
Hiram
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