Open Standard for DSL — "A Stitch in Time" or "Too Little Too Late"?

The creation of the OpenDSL initiative has the industry excited, but will the "powers that be" give it the chance, and the push, it needs to have a significant impact?

by Jim Thompson

The future of DSL started looking a lot brighter recently when several of the top equipment and semiconductor manufacturers announced that they would work together to produce standards for DSL customer premises equipment (CPE).

Intel, 3Com, Cisco Systems, Netopia, SBC Communications, and Qwest are among the industry leaders behind the OpenDSL initiative, an industry-wide alliance that has vowed to take the confusion and pain out of provisioning DSL lines. Specifically, they will work to ensure the inter-operability of equipment and modems made by rival companies and develop methods that will allow consumers to install DSL services themselves.

Seeing clear DSL through the Hayes
The initiative hopes to emulate the 56K-modem model that allows customers to purchase off-the-shelf equipment and plug it in when needed.

They are also seeking to introduce an OpenDSL starter kit which auto-configures DSL customer premise equipment (CPE).

The creation of open DSL standards comes at a time when many believe the industry is under pressure from rival technologies such as high-speed cable access. "DSL has yet to overtake cable as the most popular form of broadband access in the U.S. residential market — and probably will not do so for at least another two years (if at all)," noted the Cahners In-stat Group.

Even the top-ranked ISP on ISP-Planet's DSL rankings has too few subscribers to make the overall US ISP rankings, and cable ISP Excite@Home has more subscribers (2.3 million) that the entire US DSL subscriber base, which is about 1 million, according to Kinetic Strategies.

Additionally, other forms of broadband access, which include wireless and optical services, are making significant in-roads and gaining market share, further clouding DSL's future.

The copper irony
The irony here is that DSL runs over existing copper lines and up to 95% of all wireline local loop access in the U.S. is copper-based. What on the surface should be a slam-dunk has been a struggle for DSL over the past few years.

Until now, DSL inter-operability testing has been done on a vendor-by-vendor basis with no single body responsible for certifying equipment. Such a body, or 'clearing house' "would allow DSL carriers to avoid conducting inter-operability testing that overlays or greatly duplicates the multitude of inter-operability testing that already exists," said Chaners In-stat Group.

This is not to say, however, that there is no cooperation between vendors. Equipment manufacturers such as Copper Mountain through their CopperCompatible program and Lucent through their Wired for DSL program have inter-operability rosters that are larger than the current OpenDSL Initiative subscribers.

The cable lesson
In forming the OpenDSL initiative, the DSL industry is, essentially, borrowing a page from cable's playbook. In other words, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. Many believe that CableLabs, a group responsible for testing and certifying cable modems, has been the key to cable's success. Under the CableLabs' certification process, all cable access equipment must have the CableLabs seal of approval before it can be deployed in production networks. But if the DSL folks are a bit late to the table, they seem to making up for lost time by working together well. The DSL Forum has already thrown its strength and considerable influence behind the initiative. Just this month, close to 100 DSL Forum members gathered in McLean, Virginia to accelerate development of a single industry-wide standard.

During the gathering, the DSL Forum announced the expansion of its technical committee by creating a new CPE Autoconfiguration Working Group and a new policy that permits frequent interim meetings to compress work schedules. The CPE Autoconfiguration Group moved quickly by creating four subgroups, each given a specific assignment geared to enable simplified and automated end-to-end DSL service delivery.

Page 2: Getting it done