DSL Service: Closer Than it Appears
pubs.cmpnet.com
Tuesday, August 18, 1998, 9:00 a.m. ET.
By SALVATORE SALAMONE
In the last month, digital subscriber line (DSL)
service deployment seems to be getting a kick
in the pants.
And the benefit to IT managers is that they
may soon have DSL service available as an
economically priced, high-speed access
technology for telecommuters and connecting
small offices.
While the regional Bells are all rolling out
services, most of the excitement these days is
coming from the competitive local exchange
carriers (CLECs). What has re-energized
DSL in the last few months are what has made
it easier for CLECs to deploy DSL service.
For example, some CLECs say they now
have a better working relationship with
incumbent carriers. "We've seen a lot more
cooperation from Bell Atlantic and Pac Bell,"
said Ann Zeichner, vice president of sales and
marketing of NorthPoint Communications.
Relations haven't always been cozy and
cooperative between incumbent carriers like
the Bells and competitive carriers like
NorthPoint.
While the Telecom Act of 1996 required
incumbent carriers to let CLECs collocate
equipment in central offices, sometimes the
incumbent carriers claimed that no more space
was available.
"We were told [they] were out of space, but
space then opened up," said Zeichner. She
attributed such moves by the incumbent
carriers as tradeoffs that would in turn permit
them to enter in-state long distance markets.
According to some industry experts the
incumbent carriers are trying to show state
regulators they should be allowed to compete
in the long distance market because they are
meeting the terms of the Telecom Act by
opening up access to their facilities.
With such access to facilities and with the
experience gained from previous installments,
"it now takes about a dozen business days on
average for NorthPoint to provision service in
California," said Zeichner.
That's still much faster than the multiple weeks
or even months it typically takes carriers to
provision a T1 line.
Covad Communications Co., a data-only
CLEC, has also found the going much better
in recent months. "Recent rulings for [public
utility commissions] have helped," said Chuck
McMinn, Covad's chairman. This has allowed
Covad to get into all central offices within a
region where the company is deploying
service.
The ability to offer service in an entire region is
a crucial for Covad, which is targeting small to
medium businesses and telecommuters.
"You can serve large businesses from a few
central offices," McMinn said. "But the key to
supporting the telecommuter market is a
blanket coverage strategy. We intend to be in
every central office," in a region.
Internet service provider Concentric Network
Corp., which at the present time uses DSL
services from PacBell, Covad and NorthPoint,
points to other things that are helping with
DSL deployment.
When it comes to offering DSL services, "we
want the single largest DSL footprint," said
Mark Fisher, senior vice president and general
manager of Concentric's network services
division. "We are dealing with multiple DSL
providers and multiple services."
This represents a management challenge that
becomes particularly acute for service
providers in the startup mode.
"We interconnect with several DSL networks
and we needed something as an interface for
them to all look like one homogeneous
network to us," said Fisher.
Concentric uses RedBack Network Inc.'s
Subscriber Management System (SMS)
product that lets a service provider take
multiple DSL services and manage them more
easily.
SMS "smoothes over the differences between
the providers," said Fisher. This helps
Concentric essentially match a user to
whatever DSL service is available in that
user's area.
And Fisher said that the RedBack product
helps in other ways, too.
For instance, he said combining the RedBack
SMS and a Remote Authentication Dial-In
User Service, "we can take provisioning data
that normally has to be manually entered into a
router and automate the process."
The results of the changing climate and better
deployment tools is that DSL service is
quickly becoming available in much wider
areas.
For instance, this week Covad expanded its
predominantly West Coast offerings with the
announcement of DSL service availability in
New York and Boston. And it said that it had
begun to build a network and hire senior
managers to deploy DSL service in another 18
cities. The company plans to have DSL
service available in Atlanta, Baltimore,
Chicago, Dallas, Denver, and Washington,
D.C., by the end of 1999.
Also this month , CLEC Rhythms
NetConnections said it had completed
interconnection negotiations with incumbent
carriers that would allow Rhythms to offer
DSL service in 10 markets by the end of
1998.
And late last month, NorthPoint announced
expansion of its predominantly West Coast
DSL service into the Boston market. The
company plans to roll out service to seven to
10 cities this year.
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