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Technology Stocks : LAST MILE TECHNOLOGIES - Let's Discuss Them Here -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Frank A. Coluccio who wrote (1931)	8/19/1998 7:49:00 PM
From: Frank A. Coluccio	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 12823

Coutesy of djane on the Ascend thread... DSL Service: Closer Than it Appears By SALVATORE SALAMONE In the last month, digital subscriber line (DSL) service deployment seems to be getting a kick in the pants. And the benefit to IT managers is that they may soon have DSL service available as an economically priced, high-speed access technology for telecommuters and connecting small offices. While the regional Bells are all rolling out services, most of the excitement these days is coming from the competitive local exchange carriers (CLECs). What has re-energized DSL in the last few months are what has made it easier for CLECs to deploy DSL service. For example, some CLECs say they now have a better working relationship with incumbent carriers. "We've seen a lot more cooperation from Bell Atlantic and Pac Bell," said Ann Zeichner, vice president of sales and marketing of NorthPoint Communications. Relations haven't always been cozy and cooperative between incumbent carriers like the Bells and competitive carriers like NorthPoint. While the Telecom Act of 1996 required incumbent carriers to let CLECs collocate equipment in central offices, sometimes the incumbent carriers claimed that no more space was available. "We were told [they] were out of space, but space then opened up," said Zeichner. She attributed such moves by the incumbent carriers as tradeoffs that would in turn permit them to enter in-state long distance markets. According to some industry experts the incumbent carriers are trying to show state regulators they should be allowed to compete in the long distance market because they are meeting the terms of the Telecom Act by opening up access to their facilities. With such access to facilities and with the experience gained from previous installments, "it now takes about a dozen business days on average for NorthPoint to provision service in California," said Zeichner. That's still much faster than the multiple weeks or even months it typically takes carriers to provision a T1 line. Covad Communications Co., a data-only CLEC, has also found the going much better in recent months. "Recent rulings for [public utility commissions] have helped," said Chuck McMinn, Covad's chairman. This has allowed Covad to get into all central offices within a region where the company is deploying service. The ability to offer service in an entire region is a crucial for Covad, which is targeting small to medium businesses and telecommuters. "You can serve large businesses from a few central offices," McMinn said. "But the key to supporting the telecommuter market is a blanket coverage strategy. We intend to be in every central office," in a region. Internet service provider Concentric Network Corp., which at the present time uses DSL services from PacBell, Covad and NorthPoint, points to other things that are helping with DSL deployment. When it comes to offering DSL services, "we want the single largest DSL footprint," said Mark Fisher, senior vice president and general manager of Concentric's network services division. "We are dealing with multiple DSL providers and multiple services." This represents a management challenge that becomes particularly acute for service providers in the startup mode. "We interconnect with several DSL networks and we needed something as an interface for them to all look like one homogeneous network to us," said Fisher. Concentric uses RedBack Network Inc.'s Subscriber Management System (SMS) product that lets a service provider take multiple DSL services and manage them more easily. SMS "smoothes over the differences between the providers," said Fisher. This helps Concentric essentially match a user to whatever DSL service is available in that user's area. And Fisher said that the RedBack product helps in other ways, too. For instance, he said combining the RedBack SMS and a Remote Authentication Dial-In User Service, "we can take provisioning data that normally has to be manually entered into a router and automate the process." The results of the changing climate and better deployment tools is that DSL service is quickly becoming available in much wider areas. For instance, this week Covad expanded its predominantly West Coast offerings with the announcement of DSL service availability in New York and Boston. And it said that it had begun to build a network and hire senior managers to deploy DSL service in another 18 cities. The company plans to have DSL service available in Atlanta, Baltimore, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, and Washington, D.C., by the end of 1999. Also this month , CLEC Rhythms NetConnections said it had completed interconnection negotiations with incumbent carriers that would allow Rhythms to offer DSL service in 10 markets by the end of 1998. And late last month, NorthPoint announced expansion of its predominantly West Coast DSL service into the Boston market. The company plans to roll out service to seven to 10 cities this year.