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Non-Tech : Amati investors -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Galirayo who wrote (29032)	11/20/1997 12:10:00 AM
From: Chemsync	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 31386

[ADSL NEWS FROM COMDEX] Credit to Cyrus on PAIR thread. Hey Ray, If ya got time--where's a good entry point for PLT. Thanks in advance. sg Faster Net Access Still On Hold For Most Users (11/19/97; 4:40 p.m. EST) By John Gartner, TechWeb LAS VEGAS -- Web users feeling the need for speed will only have their pulses quickened at Comdex/Fall by frustration at the lack of next-generation Internet access products. Despite the acres of booths showing countless ways to accelerate computing, a handful of hardware vendors are offering cable modem and xDSL products. Backers of both technologies agree that 56K modems will be the dominate high-speed route for the next 12 to 18 months. Vendors said the need for overhauled telecommunications and cable networks -- not development delays -- is pushing back the widespread deployment of their products. Telephone companies must add new central office equipment and replace about 20 percent of the copper wiring to accommodate DSLs. Cable companies need to upgrade their switching mechanisms, or "head ends," to provide two-way communications with cable modems. 3Com -- along with its U.S. Robotics division -- is a noteworthy exception, displaying two new Internet access products at the show. The U.S. Robotics Cable Modem VSP Plus specifications list the maximum to-the-home downstream speed as 27 or 38 megabits per second, depending on the mode supported, but actual performance will be significantly lower. The ISA-bus VSP Plus card can only transfer data at much lower rates, in the range of 10 to 20 Mbps, according to a 3Com engineer. 3Com is also showing off the OfficeConnect Remote Dual Analog Router, due to ship in December. This small-office product aggregates two 56-kilobit-per-second phone lines into a router unit that can be divided among up to 15 users. The router provides dynamic IP addressing for simplified network management and can be configured to add or drop lines based on line usage. 3Com competitor Motorola is displaying the CyberSurfr modem, which has been shipping since April 1996. Company officials said an updated model with better performance will be unveiled at a trade show in December and will ship by year's end. Rockwell recently announced a one mbps downstream technology, called the Consumer xDSL chip set. Rockwell's technology has the advantage of not requiring a splitter box to separate the data stream to the computer and voice stream to the telephone as required in other xDSL designs. The Costa Mesa, Calif., company said it anticipates retail CDSL modems based on their chips to begin shipping by the end of 1998. Northern Telecom announced support this week for CDSL and will be offering equipment to telephone companies. Competing with cable modems at Comdex for the greater-than-128-Kbps customers are the many derivatives of DSL technologies. A-, H-, B-, and RA- and CDSL products all work with existing phone lines, but company officials from xDSL chip makers Lucent Technologies and Rockwell International said 1999 will be the earliest that products will ship in quantity. Several other companies listed in the Comdex guide as xDSL vendors had no products showing in their booths.