DSL Prime News Briefs

DSL news from North America and around the world.

by Dave Burstein of DSL Prime and Future of TV [January 7, 2005]

Correction

• DSL Prime has written that bundling the phone line with DSL service would limit independent VoIP over DSL to a small niche. The latest data disagree. "Vonage's customer base is roughly 60 percent cable and 40 percent DSL. This is a slight shift from 65 percent cable and 35 percent DSL and reflects the increased uptake of DSL in the country over the last couple of quarters. Vonage's customer base comes close to mirroring the breakdown of broadband in the country," according to Katherine Foster representing Vonage. A very surprising piece of data, especially as Vonage just passed 400,000 subscribers.

E-mail

• Andrew Nunn, Chairman of ITU WP1/15, writes of the progress of VDSL2, and corrects a date in the previous DSL Prime. "The next meeting of ITU-T SG 15 is scheduled for 16 to 27 May 2005 in Geneva. It is hoped to give 'consent' to submit VDSL2 to the approval process at that meeting."
  
  
• "Please delete me from your list as I am leaving the company," came the note from a soon to be ex-Conexant employee. Many of the former Globespan staff, as well as some of the former Conexant people, are leaving after a turnover in top management and a writedown of $50 million of inventory produced for DSL and 801.11. The shareholder suits assert the inventory problem has been important for five quarters, hidden by false sales figures and channel stuffing. I've been able to confirm heavy inventory on the market for some time, but have no direct information what is actually going on inside the company. Some good news may be at hand; I have unconfirmed rumors of working samples of a Conexant/Globespan VDSL chip, designed to match the likely VDSL2 specification.

Briefs

• "Show me an operator that believes their voice business can sustain them, and I'll write their obituary," said Niel Ransom, quoted by the BBC.
  
  
• Bellsouth will join SBC and Bell Canada in trialing Microsoft IPTV in 2005, although they've been publicly cautious about how soon they willroll video.

Wall Street

• Steve Kamman at CIBC, who looks deeply into the industry for his stock comments, went back to the Nortel/Verizon softswitch deal one year after the announcement drove Nortel's market capitalization up by more than $4 billon. Verizon has installed fewer than ten switches, he believes, and the total softswitch revenue for Nortel looks to be a fraction of the lost traditional switch revenue. Since the prime argument for softswitches at the Bells is their total cost can be less than just the maintenance on what they replace, dollar volume is limited. Softswitches sell because they are cheap, but the volume of calls fixes the total demand for switch capacity. It will always be a limited market, with prices constrained by companies like Cirpack selling excellent units at (relatively) miniscule prices.
  
  
• Gretchen Morgenstern of the NY Times chose Gary Forsee of Sprint as Biggest Underachiever of the year. She believes Forsee "could have spent the next six to nine months selling your fixed-line business and then selling the wireless business on its own, for a lot more. The way you've organized it, Sprint's shareholders have to share the proceeds with Nextel shareholders for no reason except that the deal made Sprint large enough to be the acquirer, and allowed you to keep your job." Morgenstern noted this year's merger "success" at Lehman Brothers was built upon their advice to Sprint in that deal and the also over-priced Cingular buyout of AT&T.
  
  
• Morgenstern added Disney also got into a scrape with the S.E.C. late last year over disclosure failings. It turns out that shareholders were not told that Disney employed three children of directors and that they received annual compensation ranging from $60,000 to more than $150,000. Nor were they informed that a unit that was half-owned by Disney had hired another director's spouse who received compensation of more than $1 million annually, or that Disney had provided office space, secretarial services, a leased car and a driver to another Disney director services valued at more than $200,000 annually. In settling with regulators, Disney promised to disclose all such arrangements in the future.

People

• Bob Rowe, respected Montana Commissioner who supported universal broadband service before that became fashionable, has reached the 12-year term limit, and is moving to the private sector. He'll be a partner with veteran financial analyst Mike Balhoff in Balhoff-Rowe, which will quickly become one of the leading choices for economic and regulatory analysis. Rowe's a Democrat, but Republican Senator Conrad Burns praises him "He was probably as good a PUC (public utility commission) guy as we've had for a long time. I've never seen a guy get as immersed in issues as Bob Rowe did. He's a very capable guy with a good heart." (Missoulian) Sen. Max Baucus adds "He was fighting for consumers."
  
  
• Phil Anschutz of Qwest seems to think it might be even more fun to run more newspapers. After buying Hearst's original paper, the San Francisco Examiner, he's just registered the Examiner name in 69 more cities, from Long Island to Salt Lake.
  
  
• Vladimir Oksman of Infineon and Siguard Schelstraete of Ikanos were honored with The Award for Outstanding Contributions to an ATIS Forum or Committee in October. Sorry I'm late with my congratulations to these important members of the DSL standards group.
  
  
• For job ads, visit the DSL Prime website.

Copyright 2005 Dave Burstein.
The DSL Prime Newsletter is reprinted with permission.

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