News about adsl and cable modem :
Posted at 3:25 p.m. PDT Wednesday, May 27, 1998
"Pac Bell plans high-speed access this summer"
BY JOHN HEALEY
Mercury News Staff Writer
Responding to pressure from Silicon Valley and the state
legislature, Pacific Bell plans to offer high-speed Internet service
this summer to more than a third of its customers -- at prices well
below those it has been charging in the Bay Area.
The service, based on asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL)
technology, moves data at seven to 30 times the speed of the
fastest conventional computer modem. Pac Bell plans to charge
home users $89 per month and businesses up to $339 per month
for the service, including Internet access.
Pac Bell had been moving cautiously to deploy the new
technology, conducting a year-long test followed by a lengthy
market trial. But company officials agreed to move faster, said
Jim Callaway, president of Pac Bell public affairs, after members
of the California Manufacturers Association and Intel Corp.
convinced them that the demand for the service was greater than
they had believed.
The company already offers the high-speed service in parts of the
Bay Area, with monthly prices ranging from about $160 to $400.
The deployment will start expanding in June, company officials
said, and should be finished by late August or September.
To be eligible for the service, users must be within about three
miles of one of 87 Pac Bell offices in 63 cities. The Bay Area
communities to be served include parts of San Jose, Fremont,
Hayward, Los Altos, Milpitas, Mountain View, Oakland, Palo
Alto, Pleasanton, Redwood City, San Francisco, San Mateo,
Santa Clara and Sunnyvale.
If it meets its own targets, Pac Bell will have outraced its
competitors to numerous parts of California. But Andrew
Johnson, a spokesman for Tele-Communications Inc., said that
TCI's cable-modem service will prevail in head-to-head
competition because it is cheaper and faster.
mercurycenter.com
Mang |
