DSL Prime News Briefs

DSL news from around the world.

by Dave Burstein DSL Prime [March 28, 2003]

E-mail

• In the past, some companies referred to a mostly deceptive number, "homes passed," when describing their DSL footprint. "When you quote SBC at 66 percent, Verizon at 80 percent, etc, is this percent of their COs that are deployed with DSLAMs. Or, is it the percent of the homes that are served by their COs that can actually get DSL?" The number I look for is homes servable, which has been the telco standard at least since the Pronto announcement.

Briefs

• Correction: Both Actelis and Hatteras are aimed at the key niche of 5 to 20 Mbps symmetric service over multiple lines, but that's no excuse for me to confuse them. Hatteras is the one with the new CEO, Peter Savage, who moved up from a marketing position to replace Thomas McPherson. Apologies to Tuvia Barlev of Actelis and his team.
  
  
• Correction: In an item about the increasing capacity of foundries, I mentioned ADI as an example of a company who produced their own chips. The ability to ship from your own plant was traditionally a strong selling point, but fabs expect to have excess capacity and hence low prices for the next several years. Maury Wood writes that today, "ADI uses foundry fabs for our DSL ICs, not captive fabs." ADI was a strong number two in DSL chips behind Alcatel for many years, but as part of a larger company was not as visible in DSL as more focused companies. Wood adds "We are making strong technical progress with our next generation ADSL2+." I spoke to another chip vendor, who told me to watch for the results coming from UNH and the DSL Forum ADSL2+ Interoperability testing. Seems some of the companies with big announcements in recent months haven't delivered chips that meet the complete stan dard yet.
  
  
• Qwest doesn't have the cash to expand their VDSL service, so they are actively talking with the satellite folk for an alternate way to deliver video, Steve Starliper told the RMN. The Rocky and the Denver Post have done a consistently outstanding job covering Qwest, including a Rocky series on Anschutz that should win awards. Wish the New York papers did as well covering hometown Verizon; not one of the three big dailies covered Verizon's plan to halve the number of homes that can't get DSL by the end of the year. Mark Harrington at Newsday has been more alert, including reporting local service issues.
  
  
• Ben Silverman in the New York Post did break the story that Vonage is facing a potential $5 million claim from Microsoft and friends for unlicensed software. Vonage is delivering a breakthrough service, so I wish them the best of luck. But problems like this, as well as the $20 million fine founder Jeff Citron is paying for SEC violations at Datek, raise concerns.
  
  
• For employment ads and the trade show promotion code, visit the DSL Prime website.

People

• Adrian Mello, once Editor-in-chief of Macworld and Upside, takes over at Electronic Business. He's already generating lively reporting. Happy to report they are increasing frequency to twice monthly, rare news in these days of cutbacks. Mello writes along with the frequency change there will be expanded coverage of topics such as semiconductors, supply chain management, and EDA.
  
  
• Fred D'Alessio, recently retired as president of Verizon's Advanced Services Group, joined the board at Hatteras. Joe Zell, once at Qwest, also on the board, and raised the last funding round for them. Hatteras should have no difficulty getting serious consideration at key customers.

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

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