Broadband Goes Guerrilla

Forget slow phone companies and regulators; ADSL is coming anyway.

Scott Mace

Thanks to some technical innovations, the usual culprits slowing down Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL) -- regulated, so-called incumbent phone companies reluctant to cannibalize their lucrative T1 business and government regulators bent on suppressing investment by incumbent telcos in ADSL equipment -- can't do a thing to slow down progress.

The catch: This new technology will appear first in apartments and office buildings, where it will be relatively easy for unregulated Internet service providers (ISPs) and upstart phone companies to install DSLs that lo ok to an incumbent telco like one or more T1 lines. But ADSL remains vulnerable to rival technologies in the single-family home, because incumbent telcos control the local "copper loop" where their own DSL equipment would be located.

DSL is a modem-like technology that requires a terminal-like device at each end of the cable. This device accepts a data stream, usually in digital format, and overlays it onto a high-speed analog signal, so that the wire can carry both voice and data. In ADSL, one direction has comparatively high bandwidth (up to 8 Mbps), with low bandwidth in the opposite direction, ideal for Web surfing and some streaming multimedia.

Conventional wisdom was that the economics of serving a large number of DSL customers still favored members of the old-boy phone network, because they owned the fat pipes (45-Mbps DS3 or 155-Mbps OC3) needed to serve a hundred or so DSL customers. But upstarts such as AG Communications have disc overed that, based on average customer use of DSL lines, a single T1 can support between 30 and 1502-Mbps DSL connections. Apparently, the bursty nature of most modem traffic today makes this possible; if each of those connections were doing straight file transfers, that kind of scalability would not be possible.

One small phone company that is already putting DSL into service this way is Harrisonville Telephone (Waterloo, IL), according to AG Communications, which is supplying its Service Access Multiplexer technology to the telco.

Incumbent phone companies will take longer to implement ADSL in their central offices, so cable modems will continue to have strong growth in 1998. Being a shared medium, cable modems are bound to run into two problems DSL doesn't face: congestion on the wire as users fill up local cable loops and inherently insecure communications.

Also in 1998, look for a revitalized Hayes Microcomputer Products to drive both cable modems and ADSL. At the fall Networld+Interop show, Hayes demonstrated a prototype $250 ADSL network interface card (NIC) and teamed with Cisco Systems to develop products to support the new Multimedia Cable Network System standard. Hayes will help heat up the broadband wars wherever they lead.

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Where to Find

AG Communications

Phoenix, AZ
Phone:    602-582-7000
Internet: 
http://www.agcs.com



Hayes Microcomputer Products

Atlanta, GA
Phone:    770-840-9200
Internet: 
http://www.hayes.com




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Strength in Numbers

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While home users must settle for ISDN, telecomm vendors can provide ADSL to customers who share a T1.

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AG Communications and Hayes Microcomputer Products in 1998

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AT A GLANCE: ADSL got off to a slow start, but new technology will make it easy for service providers to move it into office buildings and apartments. Cable modems will make inroads.

WHO SUPPORTS IT: AG Communications, Hayes Microcomputer Products, Amati Communications, Paradyne, Bay Networks, MediaOne, Comcast, PairGain, ADSL Forum.