DSL

DSL Prime News: The Inside Source — continued

E-mail

• Tom Cooper, who's just taken over as CEO of New Visual writes, promising "to build a good, valuable product and brand." He played an important role at Virata, and I wish him luck developing products aimed at "long reach, high performance on copper." That attractive niche is faster than DSL but much cheaper than running new fiber. Companies like Voyan, Actelis, and Ikanos are working on bonding multiple lines and carving new territory between G.shdsl and high end VDSL. New Visual's record to date has been discouraging—Cooper's got a tough job.
  
  
• "Is that $45 modem price real? I buy hundreds of thousands of units, and can't buy them for the price you reported from SBC?" was a thought-provoking comment. The figure was a projection for 2002 from SBC's analysts conference, checked with them, so I'm confident bids are coming in at that price. But it was so low it surprised me too—that's why I reported it as news. Large Asian contracts have been incredibly low-priced lately, however. The $85 DSLAM + modem price in Chunghwa has been confirmed in the Taiwanese papers, I'm told. Don't buy just on price, of course—below is an item about performance problems.
  
  
• A senior electronics journalist wrote, wondering how our reporting on Israeli companies should respond to the warfare in the near East. He and I believe our Jewish heritage requires a firm stand for justice. If I had the courage of my uncle, I would be one of the hundreds of international volunteers standing unarmed between the Israelis and Palestinians. Most will come back alive, especially if the witness they bear focuses enough international attention to stop the warfare. (My uncle, in a different time, spent five years on what he and the family considered a suicide mission. He was a pilot the early days the primitive Israeli Air Force.)

Briefs

• As companies like SBC realize it's crucial to serve customers beyond 12,000 feet, modem performance should often overshadow price, design engineers tell me. Intel's testing found they could get 50 percent better performance with an improved design. A modem distributor found one chip set decidedly superior (I'm not naming it without more independent confirmation). A key chip manufacturer, reviewing a current bill of materials, pointed out how eliminating some of the "glue" chips could save money but reduce throughput. Laurie Faulkner of Centillium points to processor performance (exact data throughput) as the key factor affecting results. The DSL Forum is close to defining a crucial set of standard modem tests, WT-062. BellSouth has already asked for it from vendors. Real world results differ, of course. I'd much appreciate more information from folks with realworld test experience, and hold the source in confidence.
  
  
• An article is missing above, which was called "incorrect" by the company. It isn't—the data is primarily drawn from the company's recent 10K. I hope by holding the story I will get some facts they refuse comment on today. Ironically, I believe the information withheld from me is relatively minor—their accountants did a proper job, and insist the 10K point out the issues.

International

• Telecom Italia had 390K subscribers at yearend 2001, looking to reach nearly 2M by the end of 2004.
  
  
• BT is planning to flood the United Kingdom with CDs for DSL.
  
  
• Telkom Malaysia is about to order 100,000 lines of DSL equipment from Alcatel, according to the Business Times (Malaysia).
  
  
• The Hanaro Thrunet merger fell apart because Hanaro objected to Thrunet's sale of the leased line business to SK, according to Gina Chon in The Deal.

Chips

• The Taiwan foundries are working on 0.13 micron chips, with high density DSL CO chips one of the early targets. The capacity glut is over, at least for the densest chips, the foundries claim, but a larger buyer confirms to me foundry prices remain flat to down.

Competition

• Comcast, National Semi, Pioneer, and Sharp are working together on MPEG-4 set top boxes, says Stefanie Olsen of CNET. The whole industry is moving to MPEG-4, which generally succeeds in delivering a decent picture in about half the bandwidth of MPEG-2. Pre-encoded movies are watchable under at data rates under a meg, but live sports broadcasts still require more than the 1.5 meg SBC is designing their broadband for.
  
  
• While majors like AT&T and Sprint have abandoned fixed wireless in the U.S., 120 small ISPs, mostly in smaller cities, are continuing to deploy. ISP-Market finds the technology is now stable, costs coming down, and several hundred thousand mostly business lines soon to deploy, Gerry Blackwell reports.
  
  
• $17 (US) is the price for cable modem service at 128/64K from Rogers and Shaw, who intend to beat AOL and Bell Canada Sympatico dial-up service.

People

• Mark Hausman was with Paradyne from the beginning of the DSL business, and now joins Corecess/Medialincs as VP Sales and Marketing for the U.S. Their IP DSLAMs are serving hundreds of thousands of subscribers in Japan for YahooBB.

Irrelevance

• The Love Song of J. Random Hacker

Wall Street

• Steve Kamman of CIBC made a gutsy call, reiterating his buy on Nortel despite Moody's downgrading the company to junk status. Usually, analysts downgrade companies after news like that hits the market, despite the fact the stock has already gone down by the time all but selected clients get the report. That doesn't help clients, who can't go back and sell at the previous prices, and is often plain wrong—the stock's not necessarily a sell at the new market price. I'm skeptical about Kamman's belief Nortel is doing well on a turnaround, however.

Employment

• "I got my job through DSL Prime," said a VP just hired. Only one new job listing came in, to my disappointment. Please make sure your companies send them to us—extraordinary people are looking. Ads are free for two issues to any company in the field looking to hire. Just send a short ad with a dedicated contact to jobs@dslprime.com. To view ads, visit the DSL Prime website.

Copyright 2001 Dave Burstein.
The DSL Prime Newsletter is reprinted with permission.

"The power of the printing press belongs solely to those who own the presses"
—A.J. Leibling

The Internet is the cheapest printing press ever invented.

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