<<Once TI provides their DMT silicon solution, Westell will turn the tide on Alcatel....>> This raises a question Bill. Late last year, shortly before Amati was bought out by Texas Instruments, Amati and Alcatel announced a cross licensing agreement to share patented intellectual property (DMT) for standards based ADSL and VDSL. I assume TI acquired this agreement along with Amati. Has Westell postioned itself to rely on silicon being co-developed by its arch opponent (ALA)? Alcatel has made some very savvy deals in its brief ADSL history.
Lucent too will be shipping samples of it Wild Wire in the 3rd quarter of 98. These chips, which are G.Lite upgradeable, come with an application pack that service providers deploy in a 5ESS or DLC.
When back in June of 1996 Lucent sold its Paradyne ADSL arm
for just $175m, John Berndt, president of multimedia ventures and technologies for Lucent Technologies explained: "Lucent can gain the advantage of Paradyne's technologies without owning and operating the business. We will still access its products as a customer." This appears to be what they're doing with DMT development too.
It now looks as though Lucent never wanted CAP. Back then it was generally conceded that CAP had a 12-18 month start on DMT. Now, as major deloyment begins in late '98 the two are almost even and the big gorillas, Lucent and Alcatel are pure DMT in house. Hopefully, WSTL's CO equipment will find acceptance. BA's initial CAP deployment smacks largely of face saving. They're certainly the exception.
Hoping for the best,
sg |
