DSL Prime News Briefs

Much news from around the DSL world.

by Dave Burstein DSL Prime [January 30, 2003]

E-mail

• From Israel, this note explaining why a trip is being cut short and he won't be visiting. "My main concern in the near future is to make sure that neither Saddam or Bush go crazy, so I'm involved in the elections." I can understand the desire to remove Saddam Hussein when I read credible accounts of his use of poison gas against his own people. But history makes clear wars rarely achieve their goals, and the consequences are usually far more severe.
• Glenn, an industry veteran, "I would like to see you give some recognition to the great job the DSLreports.com site does. After significant changes to the external wiring to my house, and reprovisioning of the Redback, I was still limited to the approximately 450 Kbps download speed. When I ran the tweak fixes from DSL Reports, I jumped immediately to 1.2 Mbps, almost 300 percent." Happy to do so—the first thing I did with my new service from Speakeasy was run to DSLreports myself. They broke nationwide the remarkable story of the cable folks sending the cops breaking into customers houses in Toledo, and lead me to stories I might have missed almost every week.

Briefs

• "Earthlink/Vonage: Big VOIP breakthrough" was planned for my lead headline, because I had confirmed a deal was done. Then Jeff Citron, the principal of Vonage, was on the cover of the NY Times, accepting a $30 million fine for his dealings in a prior company, Datek OnLine. I've no word on how that will affect the deal. Vonage continues to prove VOIP works great over the net. Steven Cherry of IEEE Spectrum writes me "voice quality is just fine on Vonage via cable broadband (Cablevision/Optonline in NJ)." I hope Citron overcomes the problems, or that someone else picks up the initiative. Mike Powell even mentioned Vonage in his Senate testimony just before the financial scandal broke.
• Verizon moved to a lesser "all-you-can-eat" plan for about $20 more than Jeff is selling VOIP, a smart move in the right direction.
• DSL.net consolidated NAS. They cover most COs in New York Boston, and Washington. They dropped 15 percent of the combined employees (to 225) and received a $6 million + line of credit. They're a very small outfit, financially and in terms of subscribers, but have one of the broadest networks to compete in Verizon territory.
• Dave Weinberger (Cluetrain, Small Pieces) has a good way to describe the plight of subscribers to AT&T broadband who are having their e-mail addresses switched for the third time in a year. Now they'll be helplessvictims@comcast.com.

Chips

• Infineon saw a rise in communications chip revenues, driven by strong Asian sales of Ethernet over VDSL.
• Conexant chips are in the new Zoom modems. They've been publicity-shy, but are selling significant volumes.
• Key foundries are cutting back expansion. DigiTimes reports "TSMC is expected to drop its capital spending from $1.7 billion in 2002 to between $1 billion and $1.2 billion this year, while UMC is expected to cut its capex by 37.5 percent from $800 million in 2002 to $500 million this year." Both are well along in .13 micron process and working on .09 for the next generation, so chip capabilities and densities should keep improving. DSLAM chips are becoming so dense the other parts of the system (splitters, connectors) are often the limiting factor.

People

• Brad Kayton shared the dream of video strength home networks when he was at 2Wire, and now at Prismiq is delivering MediaPlayer, which won an award at CES. MediaPlay allows access to digital audio, Web browsing, and instant messaging from a PC through a home network, along with displaying all the MPEG formats on your TV.
• Andrea Custis, a 25 year veteran at Verizon with a strong reputation, takes over operations in their basement DSLAM division, Verizon Avenue. She had been group president of Verizon's advanced services group which delivers DSL. Verizon Avenue, the purchased OnePoint company, made a splash in 2001 with visits to Hollywood to make movie deals, but has been very quiet since.
• Danny Gur has left Metalink and now is working with his wife Patty Davis' electronics distribution company Global Data Supply. We met them at CES; Davis is a remarkably vibrant former professional ice skater.
• Laurie Falconer was once a top analyst, then led communications for Centillium. Now, she's founded Falconer & Associates to do corporate positioning and messaging, company and product launches, and writing. Laurie's a friend and I wish her well, but I promise to do my best to see through all "positioning and messaging".
• For DSL Prime job listings, see the DSL Prime website.

Stock Market

• Netopia sales were $19.6 million, compared to $15.9 for the same period in the prior fiscal year and compared to $16.9 million for the prior quarter. SBC and Covad were heavy buyers. Sometimes good products and good support win customers.
• "Lucent's share price has more than doubled, to $1.74, since reaching a low of 58 cents in October, although it is still far from its December 1999 high of $64.69." Simon Romero reports in the NY Times.

Copyright 2003 Dave Burstein.
The DSL Prime Newsletter is reprinted with permission.

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