DSL

DSL Prime News Briefs

DSLcon rumors, more disastrous UK regulation, NTT on the move, and more.

by Dave Burstein
DSL Prime

September 28, 2000

Rumors from DSLcon

• 500,000 lines for Brazil
• 500,000 more for India
• 100,000 home VDSL rollouts in France and Germany
• 50,000 lines of G.shdsl for BT
• Telecom Italia and Telfonica are both looking to order more lines than their vendors think the companies are capable of installing,
• Lucent is seeing Nortel in key European CLEC customers.
• PBX functions will soon be delivered to the home office, by an ISP aspiring to become a CLEC.
• Residential gateways shipped to retail customers, in thousands and tens of thousands
• DMT ADSL compatible VDSL chips, announced for the second half of this year, are slipping into next year for delivery.

Incoming

• Jon Spector has been CEO of Darwin Networks since January; our mistake.
• The announced total of layoffs and contractor terminations at US West is 12 or 13,000, not 14,000. They are very clear they want the US West name replaced by Qwest in all dealings — but we're nostalgic about things like that. On the other hand, the 80% of the employees remaining are expected to provide significantly better service, to justify the massive price increases Qwest is seeking for local telephony on a product whose investment is depreciated and costs rapidly declining. Good luck explaining that to a utilities commission, or do you assume they are simply for sale?

Briefs

• The honest reaction to OFTEL and British Telecom's latest moves is unprintable in this newspaper. Essentially, they're killing any realistic chances CLECs have of ever making money. The EC is calling for firing the head of OFTEL (diplomatically, of course), and if the government actually believes in competition for BT they have little choice. We'll report the details next issue — FT has the best coverage.
• Verizon just months ago was explaining the key advantage of DSL was that it was "always-on." We were therefore shocked to read in their Boston Globe ad "Due to the sophisticated nature of DSL, Verizon Internet Services Inc. cannot guarantee that the service will be uninterrupted or error-free and individual experiences with the service can vary." Admittedly, that fine print would be thrown out in a court of law in a consumer transaction, but it's there, and we refuse to accept that the company would put out meaningless disclaimers. We'd much rather report Verizon is delivering great service, or at least taking serious steps to resolve their widely reported operational problems. Telcos, get us some positive news please!
• nCube, who's video servers have been ordered by Enron for DSL video on demand, lost a patent suit to SeaChange and will have to modify the units.
• Everyone has partnerships with VoDSL vendors, but Adtran is one of the first to complete full interoperability, announcing Jetstream certification.

Chips

• Annex C chips are required for Japan, and Globespan has now joined Centillium in shipping production chips to Japanese manufacturers
• ITeX has corrected us. They are proud to have Alcatel as a customer, and the proven compatibility that demonstrates. But they are not selling chips to Alcatel, rather it's a complete board.
• ishoni, promising a "gateway on a chip", lured a key strategist from an oldline chip vendor. Announcement shortly.

International

• Bell Canada's surprise decision to move to Alcatel for a large DSLAM order was inspired by a decision to move quickly to ubiquitous DSL. They must counter BCT/Telus and especially the cable guys, already taking customers in volume. Nortel, after the spin-off of Bell Canada's controlling stake, will always be vendor of choice. But Alcatel has shipped tens of thousands of DSLAMs, while IMAS is only out there in the hundreds. Nortel bought Promatory for one of the best boxes in the business, and they hope to win back some of the order over time, but BC went with a proven unit.
• Japan's NTT was strongly represented at DSLcon, and we believe is ready for DSL rather than moving directly to fiber. But that's a cabinet-level government decision that hasn't been made yet. NTT-DoCoMo, their majority controlled wireless division, also was in Boston - possibly to choose equipment for their joint venture with AOL.
• SBC is considering buying 30% Saudi Arabia Telecom pending privatisation rules and diplomacy, according to an excellent article by Vineeta Sheety at CWI.

Deals

• Zyan signed on HostPro (Micron chips and systems) to distribute DSL, and is aggressively looking for resale partners. Both NorthPoint and Covad have been encouraging all but the largest ISPs to work indirectly through a handful of "master resellers".

Stock Market

• IP Communications, southern regional, is close to signing another round of financing. With luck, it will protect some of Lucent's exposure.

People

• William Moses took over as CEO of Net-36, the distribution arm of PanAmSat, with a goal of deploying 4,000 to 5,000 servers deployed at ISPs, cable headends and DSL providers by late 2002.

Copyright 2000 Dave Burstein.
The DSL Prime Newsletter is reprinted with permission.

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