Trying to make ADSL universal

Universal ADSL group promotes a splitterless design for consumer market

Tam Harbert -- Electronic Business, 3/1/1998

Having learned from ISDN how not to get a high-speed telephone technology broadly adopted in the market, computer industry and telephone companies have joined forces to try to enable a consumer market for asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL) technology.

The recently launched Universal ADSL Working Group (UAWG)--led by Intel, Microsoft and Compaq Computer, and including many chip, software, PC, networking and telephone companies--should give ADSL a boost in its competition with cable modems to be the preferred Internet connection to the home, say
analysts.

The group aims to standardize on a type of ADSL that does not require a splitter to be installed in the home. This would eliminate the dreaded "truck roll" that analysts say was at least partly responsible for limiting ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network) adoption.

Indeed, analysts considered the fact that the group included most of the regional Bell operating companies (RBOCs) a real coup. That should ensure that the necessary technology is implemented in telephone central offices to make the system work.

The agreement to work together to adopt a splitterless design also shifted the competitive landscape among ADSL chip companies. In particular, the group's decision to settle on a discrete multi-tone-based standard puts Globespan Semiconductor Inc., Red Bank, NJ, at a disadvantage, says Shannon Pleasant, industry analyst at In-Stat, Scottsdale, AZ. Till now, many companies have been adopting designs based on carrierless amplitude and phase (CAP) modulation, the line technology on which Globespan based its products. But now, the momentum is clearly away from CAP.

But Armando Geday, CEO of Globespan, seems unperturbed. Indeed, Globespan is one of the members of the UAWG. The company has a CAP-based product that companies can use today while the industry--Globespan included--migrates toward DMT-based designs, he notes. "We have a long way to go [in the process of developing the standard] before anything is finalized," he says. (A standard is not expected to be final for at least a year.) "That leaves us plenty of time to come up to speed."

In-Stat's Pleasant agrees. "As long as they get it out there within the next year, they'll be fine." However, she notes that other companies, such as Analog Devices Inc., Norwood, MA, and Texas Instruments Inc., Dallas, could start offering programmable DMT designs now and upgrade them when the standard is finalized. That's something Globespan can't offer customers today, she says. "The sooner the company can come out with a DMT-based solution, the less of a disadvantage they'll be at."

Patent poker

Part of the working group's goal is to pool intellectual property (IP) on the splitterless ADSL design, notes Russ Johnsen, vice president and general manager of the Communications Division of Analog Devices in Wilmington, MA. But that may be a fly in the ointment. Even though the group may agree on how to share today's IP, it's hard to plan for how to handle future patents that might be issued, either to members of the group or, perhaps more problematic, to companies that have not joined the group, notes Globespan's Geday.

Indeed, Motorola Corp., which has had a DMT-based chip set on the market since 1996, was conspicuously absent from the membership roster when the group made its formal announcement in late January. However, Motorola did join the group on February 11. Debbie Sallee, strategic marketing manager of broadband operations in the semiconductor group at Motorola, explains that while Motorola supports the group's objectives, the company's lawyers were taking their time working out the contractual details of joining. "Motorola holds a lot of intellectual property in this area. So that's maybe more of a concern to us than to others," she notes.

Meanwhile, although the move will help ADSL become adopted at businesses, many analysts are still betting on cable modems to win in the home market. Cable provides TV as well as data, it has a wider bandwidth and is already in front of 90% of U.S. households, notes Will Strauss, president of Forward Concepts Inc., a market research company based in Tempe, AZ.

For more information about the UAWG's activities, visit its Web site at http://www. uawg.org.

-- Tam Harbert