Dee Jay--
>The fact that Rockwell and Lucent chips populate 70% of the modems
>out there vs 30% for USR shouldn't be overlooked.
Actually, it should be totally disregarded. That's nothing more than misleading marketing hype being spouted by the "consortium", which in the real world doesn't mean a thing.
You see, that 70% figure they're citing includes all of the 1200, 2400, 9600, and 19200 baud modems still in existance, as well as more recent 28.8/33.6kb modems. A huge percentage of those older Rockwell/Lucent modems have no upgrade path to 56k, period. Those modems that do will require a hardware upgrade, either by eprom swap, or in most cases, a board swap. There has been no public statement regarding if these are FRUs (field replaceable units). Further, someone is going to have to pay for that new hardware. The same is true of all Rockwell based remote access servers. So, the Consortium gets zero installed base leverage from most of those "70%" of modems, and only minimal leverage from the rest.
Meanwhile, 100% of USR remote access hubs are software upgradeable, as are 100% of their Courier modems. All of their Sportster modems are upgradeable as well, some by FRU eprom swap, and more recent models by software download. That represents major league leverage in getting now product deployed, and far more leverage that Rockwell has in their installed base.
It's understandable that the Consortium is PO'd at USR, because they (USR) are on the verge of deploying product while the rest of them are trying to untangle their pants from around their collective ankles.
Just my $0.02.
Happy New Year to you!
David |
