DSL: Rough Road to the Promised Land

Delays, problems, and outages mar the fairytale progress of the broadband technology's deployment.

by Jim Thompson

As DSL (Digital Subscriber Line) deployment becomes increasingly widespread, questions, concerns, and complaints are being heard across the country. Discussions about the reality versus the promise of DSL have become a major topic on Internet newsgroups. Is there a chink in the shinning armor of DSL?

Complaints of delays in hooking up the service, long waits on hold for tech support, confusing billing and regular outages are becoming commonplace. For ISPs, the result is a customer-relations nightmare. For customers it means frustration, confusion and, sometimes, loss of revenue.

Outages—all too familiar
Recently, GTE Inc.'s DSL customers in California, Washington, and Oregon were without service for more than two days. Ultimately, the problem was attributed to a software glitch in equipment used by GTE Internetworking, the GTE-run ISP. Outages are becoming so commonplace that when you call GTE's DSL customer support line, you get the message to press 1, "for a recording of the current outages and scheduled maintenance."

In the San Francisco area, Pacific Bell customers complain of regular outages of their DSL lines. In mid-October outages, which ranged from Napa, Calif. to Redwood City, Calif., lasted nearly three days in some cases. Outages are also reported in areas covered by Bell Atlantic, BellSouth, and US West.

"We have had installation problems along with numerous outages ever since using DSL," said Ray Muller, network administrator for TobyNet in Los Angeles. "At one point we wanted to move our DSL line to our new offices that were located in the building right next door. The CLEC moved the line, but the phone company had to do the final switching before the line would be active. We made appointment after appointment over more than a month and no one ever showed up.

"Finally, we were told by the phone company that they could not complete the installation because 'there is no DSL service in that area.' We explained that we'd had the service for more than six months, but they insisted that 'you must be wrong, you don't have DSL.' "We did eventually get the service moved, but not without more arguing." Muller added that outages have also been an issue. "It's not a big problem, but there are certainly more outages than we have experienced with a T-1 or T-3 line. Over the past year, our DSL line has been out for nearly 10 hours. The longest it has been out was a stretch of about five hours," he noted.

Weak links
Although reports of outages have been on the rise, the problem is not with the DSL technology itself, which is solid and, at least in theory, reliable.

Often, the trouble stems from failures in system hardware or software or from DSL modems or routers at the customer end. Pacific Bell noted that a router failed at its ISP, resulting in several intermittent service outages. As noted, GTE blamed software for its recent outages. Other RBOCs and CLECs have similar stories of equipment and software being at the root of their problems.

DSL is a complex technology involving complicated equipment and software that requires skilled technicians to keep it all running. In order to sell DSL service, ISPs, CLECs, and ROBOCs have been promoting the notion that it's simple and works much like a dial-up connection. The reality is that installing DSL is more like adding a T-1 line than plugging in a modem.

Not childsplay
"This is not simple stuff. Setting up a DSL network requires a great deal of technical expertise. Keeping it running is even more of a challenge. It may appear simple to the customer, but believe me, it's not," said Jim Southworth, director of advanced network services and technologies for Concentric Networks and member of the board of directors of the ADSL Forum.

Added to the complexity of the technology is an equally complex provisioning system. After a customers places an order for a DSL line, the ISP must work with a CLEC. The CLEC, in turn, must ask the regional Bell company—who considers the CLEC a competitor—for a local loop.

"There's a tremendous number of steps that have to be taken before a customer finally gets DSL service. Like the technology itself, it may look easy, but it certainly is not," said Southworth.

When elephants dance, someone is going to get trampled. In this case, it's the customers who suffer, since they never know who is to blame when problems arise. In the end, no matter who may be responsible for delays in deployment or outages, it's the ISP who takes it on the chin since they are the one with direct contact with the customer.

Shot in the foot
Ironically, the technology is very much a victim of its own success. DSL has been hyped to a point that demand has far outpaced the ability of ISPs to supply the service to customers who are hungry for high-speed access. CLECs and RBOCs are desperately trying to keep abreast of orders that are backing up daily. One local ISP told me that they have more than 4,000 DSL orders waiting to be filled. Their CLEC is trying, but just can't keep up with the demand.

It becomes an endless circle and a self-perpetuating prophecy: Customers, driven by increased advertising by ISPs, CLECs, and RBOCs, are demanding high speed services. ISPs are afraid if they don't take the orders they'll lose the business to the competition. CLECs and RBOCs can't expand their networks fast enough to keep up with the very demand they have helped to create. In the midst of all this, the financial community is pushing hard for broadband technologies, which they see as holding the future for the hundreds of upstart Internet related companies flooding the stock exchanges.

Outages will continue to be a part of the DSL landscape until network capacities are increased. It's a process that's underway but one that takes time. Flashcom, based in Huntington Beach, Calif., recently announced that it intends to spend $10 million on a new back-office system and is working on a $50 million venture capital deal. SBC Communications, which owns Pacific Bell, said it will spend $6 billion to expand its DSL service within its 13-state territory. SBC claims its effort, called 'Project Pronto,' will make broadband services available to 80 percent of its customers over the next three years.

The broadband industry is experiencing growing pains. Delays, problems and outages will likely continue until the basic infrastructure is built out to a point where it can accommodate the demand.

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