DSL

DSL Prime News Briefs

From Wall Street news, competition reports, and equipment releases to reader feedback, the news briefs bring the DSL world's news home in brief bullet points.

by Dave Burstein DSL Prime [March 29, 2002]

E-Mail

• "I am highly displeased with AOL DSL after 3 months. When I call Tech support, I know more than their technicians do. Sometimes, dialup is almost faster, apparently because of the firewall built into the software." I've been getting many comments from AOL users, all unhappy. They are apparently ramping DSL faster than they've publicly announced, with operational issues.
  
  
• "I have DSL from AOL and I've been having a lot of problems. Every day I call to report and nothing has changed. I would like to know who I need to talk to about the problem." Yet another user.
  
  

• One reader cancelled his subscription because I "favored democrats too much." I wrote in anger about corruption in Congress on Tauzin-Dingell, but in a bipartisan spirit prominently featured Democrats Towns and Engel for carrying water on this one. Democrat Tom Daschle just spoke publicly about why the Senate should pass similar legislation.
  
  

• A reader pointed out Comcast had already changed their policy about tracking customers' Internet surfing before I wrote about it last issue. Larry Lessig eloquently writes of the "End to End" organization of the Internet, a wise policy that would avoid problems like this. Users at each end provide the applications, whether Web servers, telnet access, browsers, interactive streaming, clients or tomorrow's innovations. They follow simple rules like IP addressing that enable the middle to carry their traffic, without alteration or process. E2E result: Carriers needn't fear lawsuits over user actions, freedom of speech problems similar to TW cable's shutdown of ABC in New York, publicity nightmares over privacy and security. Your company, of course, can offer any separately programs and additional services, but it keeps the network cleaner and far easier to manage.

Equipment

• AFC just bought AccessLan, and already is shipping their new IP DSLAM/multi service switch. It's a powerful platform, capable of supporting gigE and fiber, with a processor on every blade. Telcos are very interested in the future services it makes possible.

Briefs

• Broadview Networks is taking over the 200,000 customer Network Plus operation. They are an interesting New York company with several hundred COs with DSLAMs deployed in East coast cities, and five years CLEC operating experience. CTO Ken Schulman points to efficient operating, billing, and interconnect systems as crucial to their success.
  
  
• Virtual Access offered a router with the best customer diagnostics I've seen, but even customers like BT were not enough to become profitable in the cutthroat hardware business. They're going forward as a software/IP company, continuing the work on embedded diagnostics and IPSEC VPNs. Henry Brankin leads new management, drawn primarily from the engineering and design team in Ireland.
  
  
• "Broadband service is key to attracting top business customers," Mark Carpenter of Tut believes, but many of the companies offering the service died with the dot-com bust. Some hotel chains, like Tut's new customer, Larkspur Hospitality Company, are jumping in and buying their own facilities.

Competition

• "My new cable connection was ordered over the phone late Thursday night, I picked up the self install kit Friday and was up within a few minutes and the service is only $34.95 per month." A DSL systems engineer.
  
  
• CableLabs expects to see DOCSIS 2.0 gear within the year. Expect QOS, active system intelligence, priority classes of service, and dramatically faster upstream. If the real units work as well as the lab thinks, next gen cable will be much tougher competition.

Regulation

• California is following New York in dropping the telco wholesale rates 27 percent. Joelle Tessler, the new telecom reporter at the San Jose Mercury, points out a conflict AT&T faces if it starts to offer consumer service. Doing so provides concrete evidence the market is open to competition, and could speed California's LD approval.

International

• Netopia just landed a router order from PCCW, the telco in Hong Kong central to many other Asian ventures. Our Netopia router has proven totally reliable, so I'm glad to see them doing well. However, I hope they don't build a model dedicated to supporting one of PCCW's other projects: identity cards for immigrants and others in Hong Kong.

People

• Dan Moffat at New Edge hates boring companies, and just arranged the NENie Awards to honor company employees with a Hollywood style event. I'm told he looked great in a kilt.
  
  
• Lee Goldberg, one of the industry's best reporters, is now at Paul McGoldrick's innovative web site, www.analogzone.com . He's going to continue reporting on green engineering, networking & I/O.
  
  
• Mark Floyd joined the board of Occam. I usually ignore announcements like this as investor window dressing, but Floyd is not one to lend his name without special faith in the company. After his sale of Efficient to Siemens, he can easily afford to sail around the world the rest of his life.
  
  
• Ralph de la Vega led the BellSouth effort in DSL, outdistancing the other U.S. telcos. CEO Ackerman told me "de la Vega has a great future in the company." He's now is in charge of BellSouth Latin America, another high-visibility post with major challenges to overcome.
  
  
• Andrew Hamerling has moved from Bank of America to Galleon Group, a hedge fund, covering the wireline stocks. Industry analysts (and reporters) typically envy Wall Street sell side analysts, paid three to ten times as much for doing much the same work. Sell siders, in turn, sometimes point to the hedge fund folks some of whom get paid a percent of their results. In a good year, that can be an extraordinary sum. I didn't ask whether Andrew has that kind of deal.
  
  
• Adam Guglielmo has moved his analytic skills to the client side, joining DirecTV.

Wall Street

• Ikanos, VDSL/EFM chipmaker, has raised $35M, with new investments from Panasonic and Sumitomo hinting at a VDSL deployment in Japan.
  
  
• Covad guided to a flat Q1, presumably as sales lag from customers scared after Chapter 11, something now behind them. Corporate DSL service is becoming more competitive; Sprint is currently offering generally faster service at $169 than Covad at $199. Covad has a stronger guarantee and clearly established reliability. MCI has bid very aggressively for wholesale accounts, using some of the old Rhythms colos.
  
  

• Arrival, California CLEC, raised $6M from previous investors Alta Communications, Housatonic Partners, and BancBoston Capital.
  
  

• Northpoint's $B lawsuit against Verizon is scheduled for a jury trial in July, and someone willing to risk $250,000 bought a million shares in January, per the well-named site stockskill.net. There's an active community of NorthPoint investors cheering on U.S. trustee.
  
  

• New Visual (NVEI.OB) filed a 10Q 3/18, and Yahoo reported the value of its stock jumped 28 percent. Within the 10Q was a "GOING CONCERN CONSIDERATION. ... substantial doubt about its ability to continue as a going concern." I have seen no evidence that the company has developed a product likely to succeed, and urge extreme caution and a review of previous news reports (including Bloomberg) by investors and regulators as well.

Copyright 2002 Dave Burstein.
The DSL Prime Newsletter is reprinted with permission.

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