From Electronic News--January 25, 1998
DSL Enters The Fray
By Brian Strachman
Local Exchange Carriers (LECs) have been enthusiastically awaiting the rollout of a service called DSL (digital subscriber line), a high-speed data service targeted at homes and small businesses. In direct competition with cable modem services like Cox@Home, DSL provides an Internet connection at speeds of 256K and faster across a standard phone line, yet allows to the user to conduct voice conversations. The LECs have been slow to launch this service compared to the cable providers who have been selling high-speed connections over coaxial cable for almost two years now. Due to the cable industry's head start, the market has been slow to adopt DSL service and the LECs haven't made any proactive moves. While it seems that almost every press release from the LECs touts DSL as the future of data communications technology, actually subscribing to the service is another matter.
As an early adopter of technology, a high-speed connection in my home is an absolute necessity. In Arizona, our phone service is provided by U S West, who has creatively branded their DSL offering “MegaBit Service.” While this is analogous to the water company calling its product the “gallon service,” U S West is now stuck with the name and is milking it for all its worth. I contacted my Mega-salesperson to find if my area was one of the few vicinities in which the service was available. The first response of the U S West salesperson was, “Mega-what?” Finally after several slow, painful explanations about DSL, my Mega-salesperson decided to check with his manager and call me back.
To my surprise, I was informed that my residence was in one of the few scattered areas with MegaBit availability. U S West put me in touch with the salesperson with the most DSL experience; he had signed up two other customers in addition to myself. He explained that the service would cost $40 per month after a $140 installation fee to turn the service on, and another $110 if I needed a technician to come to my home to configure my computer. While I actually considered spending the $110 simply for the entertainment value of watching a U S West “technician” in action, I opted to do the installation myself. The installation involves plugging in a network card and making a few minor adjustments to the computer's system, not difficult but most likely above the skill set of the average home user.
While $140 may sound like an exorbitant installation fee, in reality it is quite reasonable considering what U S West includes. With my MegaBit service I received: a 100baseT network card worth $50, a Cisco router (the DSL modem) with a value of at least $300, eight microfilters to plug my regular phones into so as not to interfere with the DSL, and for some reason they also included a $110 feature phone with caller ID. U S West is obviously so desperate to recover some market share from the cable industry that they are willing to take a loss at the front door. By way of comparison, to get up and running with high speed service over coax requires the purchase of a cable modem at $300 or more.
The only catch is that I have to subscribe to an ISP that can handle the DSL service, and not surprisingly US West has its own ISP ready and waiting. Interestingly, the DSL service doesn't function as much like a modem, but more like a node on a network (thus the need for the router.) Given this situation, I wondered if it was possible to get a fixed IP address. IP addresses are the Internet's means of identifying computers and are randomly assigned each time a user dials in with a modem. A fixed IP would allow me to serve my own web site from my home. Unfortunately, my Mega-salesperson had no idea what a fixed IP was, or where I could find one. After countless phone calls to U S West tech support, and U S West's ISP, I finally discovered that a fixed IP runs an additional $20 per month.
Following the mandatory seven day waiting period (to allow the central office to establish the proper connection), my Mega-line was functional. I've now had the service for over a month, and despite the initial aggravation with installation, I am very pleased with MegaBit. The download speeds well exceed the promised 256K and the service has been steadily up and running the entire time. Since DSL operates from a star type network (unlike cable modems that use a tree branch style), I have never experienced degradation in service quality due to other users in my area. It is even relatively simple to network other computers on the same service. By plugging the DSL modem into a hub, every computer in the home can share the more than adequate bandwidth.
While very few people are using DSL service presently, it puts many other features within reach. Unified messaging in particular, the prodigal child of telecom, becomes a viable service as it now takes just seconds to download voice messages to a PC. I believe that service providers should consider bundling unified messaging with DSL, as bandwidth issues were the major sticking point. Additionally, four LECs including U S West, are presently negotiating to buy PointCast, an on-line news service and pioneer of Internet push technology. While PointCast has fallen out of favor recently due to lack of bandwidth, it would be an ideal bundle with DSL service. I am constantly annoyed that I am not consuming nearly enough of the bandwidth that I pay so much for each month, but PointCast's constant news and informational broadcasts should alleviate my concerns.
Due to its modest pricing and low entry fees, DSL is a viable solution in the home as well as small business arenas and is in a position to seriously cannibalize T-carrier service. As more service providers begin to aggressively market DSL, I expect to see it make significant headway against the cable modems. I believe that once the LECs have worked the kinks out of their customer service and marketing issues, DSL will be a Mega-success.
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