ADSL is Coming, but When?

Analysts and service providers differ on how soon the high-speed remote access service will be widely deployed

July 14, 1997 (Boston, Mass.) -- Industry analysts and Internet service providers speaking at the ADSL Forum Summit here on June 17 predicted demand for competitively-priced asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL) services, but differed over how fast they thought the high-speed remote access technology would be deployed.

"I'm bullish on ADSL," stated Chris Crespi, a securities research analyst with Alex.Brown & Sons, Inc. He pointed to the presence at the Summit of key industry players as evidence of strong vendor support and a good indication that service providers will get the ADSL hardware they need to roll out competitively priced services.

Bobbi Murphy, Dataquest's chief telecommunications analyst, said that while digital subscriber line technologies have the potential to revolutionize the data communications and telecommunications markets, they will be deployed only in very low volumes through the year 2000. "We are on an analog bridge to the 21st century," she declared, explaining that with a few notable exceptions, telcos and Internet service providers are not yet ready to widely deploy ADSL.

"Ameritech is committed to a widescale deployment of ADSL by the middle of next year," countered Tom Starr, a senior member of the company's technical staff and product management team. Bell Atlantic also has announced plans for widescale deployment of ADSL by mid-1998. Pacific Bell plans a regionwide rollout of the high-speed service by the end of 1998. Several Internet service providers already have rolled out ADSL on a limited basis, and an impressive lineup of key vendors already are shipping ADSL products.

The panel of Internet service providers had a clear message for attendees: Make ADSL simple, easy to deploy and cheap. If suitable price points can be achieved, said Scott Marcus, director of network architecture for BBN Planet, ADSL will be attractive to SOHOs (small offices/home offices), small and moderate-sized businesses and telecommuters. "Phone lines connect to businesses; cable TV does not," he added.

Although Dataquest Analyst Bobbi Murphy favored lower speed xDSL services, Jim Goetz, director of telecom and media for IBM Global Network Systems, said that high-speed ADSL is what corporate users want. "ADSL is a key part of our network strategies to meet our customers needs.... ADSL also will be viable for groupware applications, so long as upstream rates are at least 1 Mbps." ADSL can provide downstream rates (to the end-user) up to 8 Mbps and upstream rates up to 1 Mbps.

ADSL enables Internet service providers (ISPs) to make the Internet a true utility, said Andrew Green, president of InteleCom Data Systems. The ISP rolled out ADSL services in Rhode Island last March. "With ADSL, speeds increase dramatically, and users get 24-hour, "always-there" access with guaranteed connectivity," Green stated.

Nearly 400 executives and technical professionals from service providers, technology developers, equipment vendors and computer companies attended the ADSL Forum Summit. According to Hans-Erhard Reiter, the Forum's president and chairman, intense interest in ADSL has fueled the growth of the Forum from three founding members in 1994 to more than 250 member companies today.

The Forum's working groups met during the two days following the Summit to prepare a technical recommendations for running packet traffic over ADSL for a ballot vote and to develop an interface for SNMP (simple network management protocol) control of ADSL devices. Other working groups focussed on network migration strategies, access networks, customer premises issues, network management and testing/spectral compatibility.

Earlier this year the ADSL Forum approved a recommendation for running ATM traffic over ADSL modem links, which will enable carriers to offer customers high-speed remote access while adding the virtual circuits and quality-of-service guarantees of ATM.

The ADSL Forum is comprised of more than 250 companies representing all sectors of the world's computer and communications industries. The non-profit organization was created in late 1994 to help service providers, their suppliers and related industries realize the enormous market potential of ADSL and to speed its deployment. ADSL is a broadband technology that provides ultra-fast access to the Internet and corporate networks over ordinary phone lines while enabling real-time multimedia services.

Note: Use of quotations in the preceding news release is not intended to imply endorsement or sponsorship of the ADSL Forum or ADSL technology by any named individual or organization.