[ GTE launches ADSL ]
internettelephony.com
Carrier focuses on multitenant setups
KATHLEEN CHOLEWKA, Switching & Transmission Editor
After nearly two years of trials in Southern California, GTE Communications Corp. is offering its first commercial asymmetrical digital subscriber line services.
The carrier has signed a three-year contract with Westell Technologies and agreed to use the vendor's carrierless amplitude/phase modulation-based ADSL, rate-adaptive DSL (RADSL) modems and DSL access multiplexers (DSLAMs).
GTE will offer the residential and business services, called ADSL OnSite, to 1000 residences in an apartment complex in Marina Del Rey.
The offering is priced to include unlimited Internet access, e-mail and news group memberships, 5 Mbytes of drive space on a network server for users' Web pages, an ADSL modem rental and around-the-clock technical support.
Residential-class service costs $250 for installation and $125 a month and provides data rates up to 256 kb/s upstream and 680 kb/s downstream. Business-class service, which costs $500 for installation and $700 a month, promises rates of 384 kb/s upstream and 1.5 Mb/s downstream.
GTE cited the RADSL features as one reason it chose Westell's products. RADSL lets users take advantage of higher bandwidth when they need it. GTE will offer this option.
Multitenant environments are the fastest way to get ADSL to market because the setups are devoid of competition for copper from incumbent local exchange carriers, according to GTE. GTE also can guarantee the highest ADSL data speeds because short runs of copper are used from the modems to the DSLAMs in the basement of the buildings.
"The whole point is that this market allows us to use the cable inside the building where the service is offered," said Flynn Nogueira, director of data services for GTE.
"The multitenant area is very niche," said John Hunter, broadband analyst at TeleChoice, which forecasts 366,000 DSL lines to be deployed in North America by the end of 1997.
GTE plans to offer service in 16 other states before year's end.
Said Westell President J. Nelson: "One of the catalysts that got ADSL deployed has been competition from cable modem vendors, which have become very aggressive."
AND
SOMETHING FOR EVERYONE
TI wins Amati with cash offer, enters alliance with Westell
WAYNE CARTER, Associate Editor-News
In a surprising turn of events last week, Texas Instruments usurped Westell Technologies' acquisition of Amati Communications Corp. with a $395 million cash tender offer for Amati.
On Sept. 30, Amati and Westell had signed an agreement to merge. The all-stock deal would have given Westell, long a leader in digital subscriber line (DSL) systems development--particularly with carrierless amplitude/phase modulation technology--ownership of Amati's proprietary discrete multitone (DMT) technology. DMT has won favor as the International Telecommunication Union's model for DSL standards.
But just because Amati accepted TI's bid doesn't mean that Westell is out of the picture. Instead, when the dust settled, Westell still stood to gain about as much strategically as it would have by acquiring Amati, and it was paid handsomely by TI for its trouble.
Westell and TI formed a strategic alliance that will marry Westell's systems development expertise with Amati's DMT and software assets, the combination that was behind the Westell/Amati merger plan. And under the terms of the Sept. 30 agreement, Amati paid Westell $14.8 million for terminating the merger agreement.
In fact, TI's more direct involvement may make the deal even more appealing for all concerned than would a Westell/Amati merger.
TI and Amati had been working together since September 1996, with TI incorporating Amati software into digital signal processors, and the first fruits of that partnership are scheduled to enter testing in early 1998. Now that relationship is further solidified, and Westell will benefit without the expense of the buyout.
"Not only do we gain the benefits of the Westell/Amati merger, the strategic alliance with TI adds an ingredient we needed to be successful in the marketplace," said Gary Seamans, Westell's chairman and chief executive.
That ingredient is TI's chip development and production, an element that would have been lacking in the Westell/Amati merger, Seamans said.
The unsolicited bid was spurred not by the Westell/Amati agreement but by TI's view of the market, said George Barber, vice president of TI's semiconductor group and general manager of its network and computer products business unit.
"We continue to be more convinced that the digital modem market is going to happen in a big way," Barber said. "We've got a feeling this market is about to turn."
TI plans to proliferate DSL as quickly as possible, according to James Collinge, TI's access marketing manager. "We'll look to do whatever makes the most sense to enable the technology, to make it available in the consumer space," he said.
In a report issued last week, TeleChoice President Danny Briere predicted that the commotion will spur activity among other DSL players. At issue is how Motorola will respond now that its "alpha" partners in DSL are gone, according to the report. Amati and Westell are firmly aligned with TI, and Ericsson is working with Analog Devices Inc. The report also singled out Aware as a possible acquisition target for Analog Devices to keep TI from taking too dominant a position in the DSL market.
TI's move for a strong play in DSL bodes well not only for the companies directly involved, but for the entire industry, said Westell's Seamans.
"TI is a very bright, very big company," he said. "What a statement of support [the investment in Amati is] for the future of DSL." |
