IP: NY Times: "3 Computer Giants Join Phone Companies To Connect

[Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>]

Date: Tue, 20 Jan 1998 13:38:02
From: Ted Kircher <kircher () realtime com (16)




In my post responding to Audrie Krause on 1/17, I did not realize how
prophetic I was - so soon! The key to making this happen is for a chip
manufacturer (in this case, Intel) making a custom chip (hence w/ very
high circuit density) that is necessary for it to be sold at low cost
(relative small silicon area) with reasonable high volumes. 


This will get telecommunications closer to, but still not on, the
Moore's Law curve it would have been on if government regulations had
ended prior to 1996. 


An excerpt from that response:


"Consumers involvement should only be done by individual pocketbook
decisions; not by any government.  The computer industry is just
recovering from the inhibitors of government's regulation of
telecommunications - otherwise broadband would be pervasive by now 
(over copper via xDSL).  Let's not put more non-free market dampers on
an industry whose technology should be improving at the rate of 2x per
year (Moore's Law per chip augmented by the parallelling effect of
multiple chips per system)." 




Ted Kircher
Information Age Consulting ("Exploiting Technology for Society")
6618 Lost Horizon Drive, Austin, TX 78759-6117, USA, 512-335-1149
<kircher () realtime com>




-------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Date: Tue, 20 Jan 1998 13:28:25 -0500 (EST)
> From: Anthony Townsend <townsnda () acf2 nyu edu>
> Subject: NY Times: "3 Computer Giants Join Phone Companies To Connect to
Internet at Warp Speed"
> Sender: owner-telecom-cities () lists nyu edu
> To: telecom-cities () lists nyu edu
> Reply-to: telecom-cities () lists nyu edu
>
> January 20, 1998
>
> 3 Computer Giants Join Phone Companies To Connect to Internet at Warp Speed
> By SETH SCHIESEL
>
> Three titans of the personal computer industry have joined with most of the
> nation's largest local telephone companies to enable consumers to receive
> Internet data over regular telephone lines at speeds much higher than are
> currently possible, according to executives involved with the alliance. 
>
> Compaq Computer Corp., Intel Corp. and Microsoft Corp. intend to unveil
> the venture next week at a communications conference in Washington, the
> executives said. 
>  
>  The formation of the new group is one of the most significant early moves
> in what promises to be a years-long battle between telephone companies and
> cable television companies for control of how consumers get high-speed
> access to the Internet. 
>
> The executives said the three companies, which set much of the agenda in
> the computer industry, have teamed up with GTE Corp. and with four of the
> five Bell telephone companies to set technical standards for the next
> generation of access to cyberspace. 


> The group wants to have modems and software based on the new standards on
> store shelves by Christmas, the executives said. If the group succeeded in
> popularizing the technology, consumers could get data like World Wide Web
> pages from the Internet and other advanced services at speeds up to 30
> times faster than today's fastest modems deliver. Pages that now take
> minutes to view would appear on a computer's screen almost instantly. 
>
> The products envisioned by the consortium would essentially be new modems
> either installed inside a computer or sitting alongside one. Most
> important, perhaps, they would plug into normal telephone lines but would
> remain connected to the outside world at all times without the need to
> dial a service and without interfering with normal voice conversations
> over the same line. 
>
> Such lightning-quick access to cyberspace has traditionally been possible
> only in offices or over cable modems, which are available in few parts of
> the United States. Giving home users such a fast onramp to the information
> highway could open the door to new sorts of services, including video over
> the Internet that approaches television quality. 
>
> "Once you get this stuff you will sell your first-born before you go back
> to a normal modem," said Howard Anderson, managing director of the Yankee
> Group, a technology consulting firm in Boston. "It's such a better
> service." 
>
> The technology embraced by the consortium, known as digital subscriber
> line, or DSL, has been under development in the telecommunications
> industry for years but has been held back by a lack of agreement on
> technical standards. 
>
> Bell Atlantic Corp., which serves local telephone customers from Virginia
> to Maine, is the one regional Bell that has shied away from the new
> Compaq-Intel-Microsoft consortium. People close to the talks between the
> company and the consortium said that Bell Atlantic was leaning toward a
> different sort of DSL. And while the company has left the door open to
> join the group, it also has reservations about how the consortium is run. 
>
> The consortium is strongly influenced by its founding partners, said
> executives who have dealt with it. Compaq is the world's largest maker of
> personal computers; Intel is the largest maker of the microprocessors, the
> brains of personal computers; Microsoft is the largest maker of operating
> systems, the software that acts as the central nervous system of personal
> computers. 
>
> As computer users have become more sophisticated and as the Internet has
> become loaded with data-heavy graphics, traditional modems, the devices
> that enable computers to communicate over telephone lines, have not kept
> pace. 
>
> The result is often long delays while users wait for information to be
> received from the network. The cable television industry is pinning some
> of its hopes for growth on cable modems, which allow users to access the
> Internet using the cable network. 
>
> But only about 100,000 people have signed up for cable modems so far,
> according to analysts, and the service is available to only about 10


> percent of the nation's homes. 
>
> People with a need for speed online today can often order high-speed data
> lines from their local telephone company. But many of those options, like
> the lines known as ISDN connections, can be cumbersome and expensive and
> require installation by a telephone company technician. 
>
> Microsoft has been particularly expert at playing on both sides of the
> cable-telephone fence. Last year Microsoft invested $1 billion in Comcast
> Corp., the No. 4 cable company and a part owner of At Home, a new company
> that provides Internet access over cable lines. 
>
> For many years engineers and programmers believed that the copper wires
> that carry voice conversations could not compete with dedicated data
> networks in their ability to carry large amounts of digital information. 
>
> But in recent years advances in electrical engineering have challenged
> that assumption. Some engineers today think that standard copper telephone
> wires can carry as many as 8 million bits of information a second, though
> the consortium is initially developing standards for modems that can carry
> only 1.5 million bits a second. A bit is the smallest amount of
> information a computer can process, either a zero or a one. Today's
> fastest standard modems are rated at 56,000 bits a second but are actually
> limited to transmitting 52,000 bits a second. 
>
> There are dozens of companies, large and small, developing DSL products,
> though few follow the same standards. The Compaq-Intel-Microsoft
> consortium is relying in part on technology developed by a small
> Massachusetts company called Aware Inc., though the group has not finished
> developing its technical protocols. 
>
> Several local telephone companies have already deployed DSL in limited
> areas around the country. US West, for instance, unveiled DSL in the
> Phoenix area last October. The service there requires an installation fee
> of about $200 and a monthly subscriber fee of at least $40. 
>
> That is about the same price as an At Home connection through Comcast in
> northern New Jersey, although cable modems can deliver higher speeds than
> 1.5 million bits a second. 
>
> Today's fastest modems cost about $150, while access to the Internet
> typically costs $20 a month. 
>
> The DSL market has already attracted the attention of big makers of
> communications gear. Monday Lucent Technologies Inc., the former equipment
> arm of AT&T Corp., announced a DSL product. It was unclear Monday whether
> Lucent was a member of the consortium. 
>
> Lucent declined to comment, as did Compaq, Microsoft, Ameritech, Bell
> Atlantic, BellSouth, GTE, SBC Communications, US West and Aware. 
>
> For their part, Internet consumers can be comfortable that they are in the
> middle of a high-stakes battle between two big communications industries,
> one that controls telephones, the other that controls televisions. 
>
> "The real target of this is the cable modems," said Anderson. "Now the
> consumer has a viable choice." 
>
> Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company 


> ------
> Anthony Townsend
> tel 212-998-7524, fax 212-995-3890
> Taub Urban Research Center, New York University
> townsnda () acf2 nyu edu
> http://www.nyu.edu/urban