Analog squabbles as it dies.
From Nov.25 LAN Times
A Distant Future for 56Kbps Standards
Managers shouldn't expect an official S6Kbps modem standard soon. The four leading 56Kbps developers can't even agree on which organization
should receive their proposals for a standard.
In September U.S. Robotics Inc. proposed its x2 standard to the ITU (International Telecommunications Union), which defines worldwide modern standards. Meanwhile, Motorola Inc., Rockwell Semiconductor Systems, and Lucent Tech-nologies Inc. have been collaborating on a standard they intend to propose to the Telecommunications Industry Asso-ciation (TIA), which defines North American standards. They first addressed the TIA last month, and additional meetings are planned for this month.
ITLY standards often take two years or longer to be formu-lated. The TIA is considered a faster route to reach a stan-dard. The trio proposing the TIA standard, for example, hopes to deliver an approved specification by mid-1997.
The Motorola/Rockwell/Lucent group asked USR to join their effort but were rebuffed, leading to bitter claims that USR is trying to stall official efforts and establish x2 as the de facto industry standard.
USR maintains that it is going the ITU route to establish a global standard for the benefit of users 'worldwide.
Richard Sterry, vice president of marketing at Netaccess Inc. in Salem, N.H., said his company is still considering which technology should be used to develop a S6Kbps addi-tion to its line of interface cards for remote-access servers.
56Kbps "will never take off unless there are standards," said
Sterry, who feels the industry needs one quickly because be sees only an 18-to 24-month window for 56Kbps modems before competing technologies such as asymmetric digital subscriber line emerge.
Sterry added that if any of the approaches "is a software upgrade, it has a good chance of becoming a [de facto stan-dard." USR's x2 is mostly a software upgrade; Rockwell's appears to require new modems.
"There's no point in doing this unless there's a ubiquitous standard," said Kitty Weldon, senior analyst at the Yankee Group in Boston. "How can the market really grow to criti-cal mass without one?"
But Clay Ryder, director at Zona Research Inc. in Redwood City, Cab f., feels S6Kbps will attract interest from bandwidth-hungry corporate America whether there's a standard or not.
To Ryder, however, the deciding factor will be performance, not standards. "The fact is that it's probably not going to work over 90 to 9S percent of the phone lines out there,,' he said. "The infrastructure has to be just about perfect for this thing to work."
For that reason, Zona's Ryder expects companies to move when they are ready from 28.SKbps connections to a digital technology like ISDN
Keith Hamilton, online-information manager at AlamedaMamboed Newspaper Group Inc. in Pleasanton, Calif., agreed that 56Kbps is a stretch over copper lines. But for it to come even close to successful implementation, he said, a standard is vital.
"I hope these guys will learn from. their past, screw their heads on straight, and come up with a standard," he said.- |
