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Technology Stocks : PairGain Technologies -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Henk Kruisbrink who wrote (19591)	1/29/1998 11:39:00 AM
From: indy	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 36349

PCWorld comments on status of ADSL standards pcworld.com ADSL This Year? Not Likely by Brian McWilliams, PC World News Radio January 28, 1998 On Monday one of the Web's worst-kept secrets finally spilled out. A group of PC companies including Compaq, Intel, and Microsoft, along with several major telecom providers, announced plans to push ADSL as an affordable option for home PC users. Calling themselves the Universal ADSL Working Group, they pledged to overcome the obstacles that have prevented ADSL from taking off. And they even predicted that some PCs released for the holiday season would come with ADSL service. But that's unlikely according to Lisa Pelgrim of Dataquest. "Christmas is always a nice time to roll out a product," she says. "But I'm not sure which Christmas they're talking about. This Christmas [1998] is very unrealistic, hopelessly optimistic. Next Christmas [1999] is very optimistic." Pelgrim says it's remarkable that the PC industry is getting behind ADSL, and its support could get the technology on a fast track for standardization by the International Telecommunications Union. But before 1.5 megabit-per-second downstream speeds become as commonplace as VCRs, Pelgrim predicts a messy ADSL standards battle. Right now there's a lot of jockeying among Rockwell, Lucent, Texas Instruments, Aware, and several other makers of the so-called splitterless modems that are key to the ADSL-Lite service envisioned by the Universal ADSL Working Group. "Think about how complicated 56K was, and we only had two different implementations," Pelgrim points out. "This standard is going to be much more complicated than 56K was--and we need a standard to come out with mass deployment." Expect some characteristic inertia from telecom providers as well, as they deliberate how to roll out ADSL. One incentive is the relief ADSL technology can bring to their clogged network switches. Unlike Internet use over conventional analog phone lines, ADSL is much easier on the phone network. But it will require infrastructure changes by the telephone companies, and change is not something they relish. The bottom line, says Pelgrim, is that ADSL has been overhyped, and we should expect 56-kbps analog modems to provide most people's fastest Internet access until at least the middle of next year.