Full Story: New alliance eyes warp-speed Web access
New York Times
Three titans of the personal computer industry have joined with five of
the nation's largest local telephone companies to push a unified
approach to high-speed Internet access over ordinary phone lines -- in a
bid likely to accelerate a promising but long-delayed technology.
Compaq Computer Corp., Intel Corp. and Microsoft Corp. intend to
unveil the venture next week at a communications conference in
Washington, executives involved with the alliance said.
The computer and phone companies are developing standards for
so-called digital subscriber line (DSL) service, focusing on a version
that would deliver the Internet 30 times as quickly as conventional
modems. With such speed, Web pages that now take minutes to view
would appear on a computer's screen almost instantly.
Several DSL services already are available in much of the Bay Area
and other communities around the country, although the monthly rates
are well above what the average Internet surfer would want to spend.
The version that Compaq, Intel and Microsoft are promoting could be
less expensive, though, because it would be built into new computers
and require no extra work to install.
Top telecommunications equipment manufacturers, including Lucent
Technologies, Northern Telecom and Rockwell, have already
announced a similar money-saving approach to DSL. They are working
on standards, too, but their efforts could be eclipsed by the market
power of the Microsoft-Intel-Compaq alliance.
For the computer industry alliance, faster Internet access is a powerful
way to pump up consumer interest in bigger and better computers, at a
time when a boom in sub-$1,000 PCs threatens to cut into profit
margins. Today's high-end computers are built to present top-quality
sound and video, but the low capacity of today's phone network
degrades the splashy multimedia material available on the Internet.
Holiday goal
Microsoft, Intel and Compaq hope to have modems and software based
on the new standards on store shelves by Christmas, the executives
said.
DSL multiplies the capacity of copper phone wires by using frequencies
higher than those used to carry conversations.
The formation of the new group is one of the most significant early
moves in what promises to be a years-long battle between telephone
companies and cable television companies for control of how
consumers get high-speed access to the Internet. The group includes
the two major local-phone companies in California -- SBC
Communications, the parent company of Pacific Bell, and GTE Corp. --
and three of the other four regional Bells.
The products envisioned by the consortium would essentially be new
modems, either installed inside a computer or sitting alongside one.
Most important, perhaps, they would plug into normal telephone lines
but would remain connected to the outside world at all times without the
need to dial a service and without interfering with normal voice
conversations over the same line.
Such lightning-quick access to cyberspace has traditionally been
possible only in offices or over cable modems, which are available in
few parts of the United States. Giving home users such a fast on-ramp
to the information highway could open the door to new sorts of
services, including video over the Internet that approaches television
quality.
''Once you get this stuff you will sell your first-born before you go back
to a normal modem,'' said Howard Anderson, managing director of the
Yankee Group, a technology consulting firm in Boston. ''It's such a
better service.''
DSL has been under development in the telecommunications industry
for years but has been held back by a lack of agreement on technical
standards.
'Baby Bells' sign on
Bell Atlantic Corp., which serves local telephone customers from
Virginia to Maine, is the one regional Bell that has shied away from the
new Compaq-Intel-Microsoft consortium. People close to the talks
between the company and the consortium said that Bell Atlantic was
leaning toward a different sort of DSL. And while the company has left
the door open to join the group, it also has reservations about how the
consortium is run.
The consortium is strongly influenced by its founding partners, said
executives who have dealt with it. Compaq is the world's largest maker
of personal computers; Intel is the largest maker of the
microprocessors; and Microsoft is the world's largest software
company.
As computer users have become more sophisticated and as the Internet
has become loaded with data-heavy graphics, traditional modems, the
devices that enable computers to communicate over telephone lines,
have not kept pace.
The result: long delays while users wait for information to be received
from the network. The cable television industry is pinning some of its
hopes for growth on cable modems, which allow users to access the
Internet using the cable network.
But only about 100,000 people have signed up for cable modems so far,
according to analysts, and the service is available to only about 10
percent of the nation's homes.
People with a need for speed online today can often order high-speed
data lines from their local telephone company. But many of those
options, such as the lines known as ISDN connections, can be
cumbersome and expensive and require installation by a telephone
company technician.
Microsoft has been particularly expert at playing on both sides of the
cable-telephone fence. Last year Microsoft invested $1 billion in
Comcast Corp., the No. 4 cable company and a part owner of @Home
Corp., a Redwood City company that provides Internet access over
cable lines. It also has teamed with Ameritech, the Chicago-based Bell,
to offer a DSL service in Ann Arbor at prices far below the industry
average.
For many years, engineers and programmers believed that the copper
wires that carry voice conversations could not compete with dedicated
data networks in their ability to carry large amounts of digital
information.
Goal: 1.5 million bps
But recent advances in electrical engineering have challenged that
assumption. Some engineers today think that standard copper telephone
wires can carry as many as 8 million bits of information a second,
though the consortium is initially developing standards for modems that
can carry only 1.5 million bits a second. A bit is the smallest amount of
information a computer can process, either a zero or a one. Today's
fastest standard modems are rated at 56,000 bits a second but are
actually limited to receiving 52,000 bits a second -- and in practice
almost never reach that speed.
There are dozens of companies, large and small, developing DSL
products, though few follow the same standards. The
Compaq-Intel-Microsoft consortium is relying in part on technology
developed by a small Massachusetts company called Aware Inc.,
though the group has not finished developing its technical protocols.
By eschewing the fastest version of DSL, the group is trying to avoid
some of the technical problems that have limited the availability of such
services. The biggest hurdle for consumers, though, has been DSL's
price tag: in the Bay Area, most DSL connections to the Internet start
at $160 to $200 per month.
Today's fastest modems cost about $150, while access to the Internet
typically costs $20 a month.
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