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To: lizard lick who wrote (61919)	9/18/1999 12:35:00 PM
From: kendall harmon	Respond to of 120523

DSL technology article from the Chicago Tribune <<By Jon Van Tribune Staff Writer September 19, 1999 Sailing under the innocuous letters DSL, a new technology is on the verge of shaking America's local phone industry to its core, blowing away the Chicago region's complex phone pricing and challenging every aspect of the traditional phone business. The same competitive forces that have driven down prices and spawned a host of competitors in long-distance service over the past two decades are finally about to attack local phone service. Those forces are powered by DSL, which stands for "digital subscriber line," a piece of tin-eared techno-jargon that camouflages the radical changes at hand. DSL uses existing copper wires that already run into a customer's house to provide a superfast Internet computer connection and--coming soon--add a separate voice channel for each member of the household, all without requiring any new wires into the home. The technology also offers both profound challenges and enticing opportunities to hulking local phone giants like Ameritech Corp. and its soon-to-be new owner, SBC Communications Inc. But despite their historic monopoly control of the local phone network, the Bell behemoths have little hope of containing DSL's power to undermine their industry's traditions. Still not widely available throughout the Chicago region, DSL is mostly touted as a way to juice up today's copper phone lines so they can deliver Internet connections at rates nearly 100 times faster than traditional dial-up modems. But that's only the beginning for DSL, which also promises to open up as many as 24 voice channels over a single pair of copper lines that now carry one voice conversation. While early versions of DSL voice service may not sound as good as traditional phone service, engineers expect quality will improve rapidly as the technology develops. Voice communication over DSL will be available in Chicago as early as next spring, and at least some companies may offer customers flat-rate phone service for voice as well as high speed Internet hookups as part of the new era in phone communications. Chicago's confusing local toll arrangement by which calls from the city to Schaumburg can cost as much as calling New York seem a logical target of Ameritech competitors armed with voice-over-DSL technology. "These guys will destroy the minutes-of-use notion of pricing," said Terry Barnich, a former chairman of the Illinois Commerce Commission who is now a Chicago-based telecommunications consultant. "The new networks aren't engineered for minutes of use, they're engineered to lease bandwidth at a low flat rate." Another industry observer, Blaik Kirby, a principal with the Boston-based Renaissance Worldwide consultancy, said "this is a very disruptive technology. It will have a much more dramatic effect on the economics of local phone service than anything yet seen. "It will drastically reduce the amount people must spend on local service....">> Rest is at: chicagotribune.com