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Working On The Universal Appeal Of ADSL
By Kelly Jackson Higgins Universal ADSL (asymmetrical digital
subscriber line) technology is touted as a way to pull information
from the Internet at speeds of anywhere from 64 Kbps to 1.5
Mbps, and push at rates between 32 Kbps and 512 Kbps. Its
promise is so great that major industry players have put their
shoulders into the effort of bringing a standard to market
through the new Universal ADSL Working Group, which is
developing an ADSL "lite" standard that could bring "always on"
Internet to a PC near you. Among Universal ADSL's supporters
are Alcatel, Cisco Systems, Compaq Computer Corp., Ericsson
Telecom, GTE Corp., Intel Corp., Lucent Technologies, MCI,
Microsoft Corp., Northern Telecom, Rockwell Semiconductor
Systems, Sprint, Texas Instruments, 3Com Corp. and all five
regional Bells.
In an interview with Network
Computing, John Cahill, co-chair
of the Universal ADSL Working
Group and executive director of
BellSouth's advanced networking
division, talks about the challenges
and opportunities awaiting
Universal ADSL, which will be
based on the existing ANSI
T1.413 specification, as well as
BellSouth's strategy for rolling out
ADSL services to consumers and
businesses.
What is the significance of the
mix of players who initiated the
Universal ADSL Working Group? Compaq, Intel and Microsoft initiated
meetings with the regional Bells to float this idea. To accelerate the ADSL
market, we realized mutually that we needed players from both the PC
industry and the telco service provider industry. Just the telcos or the PC
companies couldn't make ADSL happen end to end. This is probably
unprecedented. I was quite surprised at the enormous response we had from
all of these players to define specifications and come up with an end-to-end
solution. The recent history with ISDN and 56K [modem technology] was
probably fresh enough in everyone's minds that they realized the benefits of
this alliance and what it would take to pull this off. We see Universal ADSL
as being complementary to and interoperable with the ANSI T1.413
standard, which is what the Joint Procurement Consortium [JPC] based its
purchases on with Alcatel for full-rate ADSL.
Will you explain BellSouth's ADSL strategy? We've got a trial in
Birmingham, Ala., with connections to multiple ISPs, including BellSouth.Net
and www.isp, and we are evaluating products. We are introducing the latest
versions of ADSL hardware and software that Alcatel is releasing in the next
few months. We are evaluating our cost points, defining our service
descriptions and developing a marketing plan for ADSL. We haven't finalized
our deployment plans yet--we are trying to take into consideration where
Universal ADSL is going. There ultimately will be two versions of ADSL--a
consumer, mass-market ADSL (Universal ADSL) and a higher-speed,
higher-quality-of-service and higher-priced, business-oriented ADSL service.
There will be different classes of service, where you pay for value as you
move up the chain.
What are some of the challenges in developing Universal ADSL? We
need to decrease the power, speed and available throughput, with the
ultimate goal being to reduce the need for a splitter device at the user site for
voice and data traffic. I don't know if we can eliminate the splitter altogether.
That depends on the inside wiring and, in some cases, the phone installed.
What has inhibited DSL deployment thus far? One thing is the cost of
the CPE [customer premises equipment]--the modem the user needs to get
connected. The other is the complexity of an ADSL service, which has
inhibited mass deployments by telcos and other service providers. Now,
when we go to install ADSL, we need to do a loop qualification [to make
sure the lines are fit for ADSL].
With one common Universal ADSL standard all these manufacturers can use,
modem prices can decrease. Then users can go to any retail store, buy an
ADSL modem, plug it into their PC, call us up and say, "I'd like ADSL
service." Then it's a matter of us doing a quick loop qualification and turning
on the service.
What does Universal ADSL mean to the cable-modem market? We
see cable providers as formidable competition. We want to target the existing
copper facility as an alternative to cable modems for Internet access. And
cable companies, too, have infrastructure issues, like deploying two-way
capabilities and the fact that the cable infrastructure is based on shared
bandwidth. The cable that goes by your house goes by thousands of other
houses as opposed to ADSL, which is point-to-point.
Ultimately, that point-to-point feature will let traveling business users access
their corporate LANs from home or the road through an ADSL connection.
This telecommuting and remote-access market is key for Universal ADSL.
What role will ADSL play in helping regional Bells like BellSouth
become major Internet service providers? It's important for the next
technology step. We are already in the ISP business with BellSouth.Net. We
see ADSL access becoming ubiquitous across our region, which may take
three to four years to happen. And we are heavily committed to
BellSouth.Net.
Will the Universal ADSL Working Group and ADSL Forum work
together? There are a lot of the same members in each group. The ADSL
Forum is addressing other issues, like end-to-end connectivity. I see the two
groups working together very closely. The working group is putting together
reference documents for interworking and frameworks for ADSL, and then,
ultimately, we will disband and you might see the ADSL Forum doing
interoperability and high-level architecture work.
Will widespread adoption of Universal ADSL spell the demise of
ISDN services? And do the emerging Always On/Dynamic ISDN
(AO/DI) services that BellSouth and other regional Bells plan to roll
out this year compete directly with Universal ADSL? ISDN BRI has
additional capabilities around voice, such as for supporting faxing and other
voice lines. It's a higher-end service. And ISDN is available today virtually
everywhere in the region. ADSL may, however, replace ISDN totally for
Internet access--but that will take at least two to three years to happen. We
continue to evaluate options for our current service offerings, including AO/DI
ISDN. Eventually, the ADSL and AO/DI products may collide, and then we
will make the right market and economic decision for our services.
What is the Universal ADSL Working Group's timetable for
delivering a specification? We were delivering a high-level specification to
the International Telecommunications Union [ITU] in February and will have
a final draft at the ITU's next meeting this summer. Universal ADSL, or
G.Lite, is going to be based on the existing T1.413 specification. |
