BellSouth | Ian Andrew Bell https://ianbell.com Ian Bell's opinions are his own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Ian Bell Wed, 17 Sep 2003 21:51:36 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.8.2 https://i0.wp.com/ianbell.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/cropped-electron-man.png?fit=32%2C32&ssl=1 BellSouth | Ian Andrew Bell https://ianbell.com 32 32 28174588 SBC Won’t Name Names in File-Sharing Cases https://ianbell.com/2003/09/17/sbc-wont-name-names-in-file-sharing-cases/ Wed, 17 Sep 2003 21:51:36 +0000 https://ianbell.com/2003/09/17/sbc-wont-name-names-in-file-sharing-cases/ *As proof that market dynamics can influence lawmaking, SBC has fallen into step with Verizon in putting up roadblocks to stop the RIAA’s maniacal tirade against P2P. The quote that says it all? * “We are going to challenge every single one of these that they file until we are told that our position is wrong as a matter of law”. Brilliant. And good marketing, too. If I lived in SBC territory I’d leap to join their network and sign up for ADSL. * -Ian.

—- http://www.tuscaloosanews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20030916/ZNYT01/309160363

SBC Won’t Name Names in File-Sharing Cases*

By SETH SCHIESEL New York Times September 16, 2003

* • Discuss this story <to turn over the names of their customers who are otherwise known only by the murky screen names and numeric Internet Protocol addresses used in cyberspace.

SBC, the No. 2 regional phone company and a major local telecommunications service provider in the Midwest and West, has received about 300 such subpoenas and has refused to answer any of them. It has stuck to that position even though Verizon, the biggest local phone company which has most of its customers along the East Coast lost a major lawsuit this year against the recording industry.

The contrast between SBC’s stance and that of its peers illustrates how Internet providers have been caught in the middle of the music industry’s pursuit of individual music swappers. Their range of responses underscores the complexities of the legal landscape in this new area of law, the mounting tensions between copyright enforcement and privacy, and the limits of technology in finding cyberspace pirates.

In the Verizon case, a federal judge in Washington ruled that the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 required the company to reveal the identities of its customers even though the industry’s subpoenas had not been individually reviewed by a judge. Oral arguments in Verizon’s appeal are to be heard today by a federal court in Washington.

Most big Internet providers say that the original decision in the Verizon case essentially validated the subpoenas that the recording industry sent to other companies. SBC, however, has sued the recording industry group in California.

“We are going to challenge every single one of these that they file until we are told that our position is wrong as a matter of law,” James D. Ellis, general counsel for SBC, said yesterday in a telephone interview.

Ever since the Telecommunications Act of 1996 remade the communications industry, SBC has been considered by far the most legally aggressive of the nation’s major communications companies. Mr. Ellis is scheduled to testify tomorrow about the copyright subpoenas before the Senate Commerce Committee. With about three million high-speed data customers, SBC is the nation’s No. 1 provider of broadband Internet access using digital subscriber line technology.

“Clearly, there are serious legal issues here, but there are also these public policy privacy issues,” Mr. Ellis said. “We have unlisted numbers in this industry, and we’ve got a long heritage in which we have always taken a harsh and hard rule on protecting the privacy of our customers’ information.”

Recording industry officials see SBC’s stance not as a matter of principle over privacy but as a matter of dollars from downloading. They assert that SBC is not concerned about copyright protection because the company uses the lure of music piracy to attract high-speed Internet customers.

A record industry official pointed to a past print advertisement from SBC’s Pacific Bell unit that read, in part: “Download all the music you like. And all the music you sort of, kind of, maybe even a little bit like. Go MP3 crazy. Try new music. Build a song library. Whatever.”

“Sure beats going to the record store,” the advertisement concluded.

A spokesman for the record industry group said the ad had appeared in The Los Angeles Times as recently as January 2002.

Matthew J. Oppenheim, the trade group’s senior vice president for business and legal affairs, said the ad was important because it suggested a strong motive for SBC’s position. “SBC believes that free music drives its business,” he said. “That’s the only explanation for why they would relitigate issues that have been resolved.”

An SBC spokesman, Selim Bingol, said the advertisement was irrelevant. “It’s ludicrous to suggest that an ad that has not appeared for many months has anything to do with today’s debate,” he said. “We are opposing these subpoenas because under the R.I.A.A.’s interpretation, they are a threat to consumer privacy and safety.”

The wave of subpoenas that led to last week’s lawsuits began about 10 weeks after the judge in the Verizon case issued his final ruling in April. On July 7, the Monday after the Independence Day weekend, lawyers at Internet providers returned to their offices to find a blizzard of legal requests from the recording association. Comcast, the nation’s leading provider of high-speed Internet access to homes, which it supplies through its cable system, received more than 100 subpoenas in the first two days after the holiday.

“It really was a fire drill,” said Gerard J. Lewis, Comcast’s chief privacy officer. At Comcast and other companies, the first subpoenas were dated July 3, the last day before the holiday weekend, and they required the companies to provide the information within seven days. That meant that Internet providers that thought the subpoenas were legal had only two or three days to comply.

Now, according to lawyers at several major Internet companies, the recording industry has agreed to a looser schedule: 10 business days from when the Internet provider receives the subpoena.

The digital copyright law does not require anyone to notify consumers that their personal information has been subpoenaed. It appears, however, that most major Internet providers including Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Verizon made an effort to send letters to many customers who were the subjects of subpoenas, notifying them that unless the customer signaled legal action, the information would be provided to the recording industry.

According to executives at several major Internet providers, only the barest minimum of customers took any steps to block the disclosure of their information. Of the 261 individuals sued by the industry so far, however, a number have said they never received any notice from their Internet provider.

Tracking down the numeric Internet protocol, or I.P., address employed by any given user of a file-sharing network is relatively easy. In essence, the industry focused on users who appeared to be making large numbers of music files available to others on file-swapping networks like KaZaA and Morpheus. Industry investigators noted the I.P. address of the user and the exact time at which the user was making files available.

The recording investigators could then determine which Internet provider assigned the specific I.P. address. The subpoenas included both the I.P. address and the time so that the Internet provider could see which of its customers was using that address at that particular moment. With many consumer Internet services, the I.P. address for a user can change every time the computer is turned off and turned back on, so the exact time is a critical tool for matching I.P. addresses and users.

The length of time that Internet providers maintain logs of users, addresses and times varies. Comcast and Time Warner Cable, for instance, generally keep those logs for only 30 days. That means that if those companies receive a copyright subpoena with an I.P. address and time more than a month old, they may be unable to answer the request.

Verizon, by contrast, generally keeps its I.P. logs indefinitely.

“Verizon keeps that sort of information for traffic management and to help law enforcement,” said Sarah Deutsch, a Verizon vice president and associate general counsel.

Mr. Oppenheim from the recording industry association said he was generally pleased with the level of cooperation his organization has received. Nonetheless, executives at several Internet providers that are cooperating with the association expressed privately some discomfort with the process.

“We fully understand that copyright protection is a legitimate goal,” said one executive at a major Internet provider. “That being said, it doesn’t seem like the consumers’ privacy interest is really being balanced out here in this process.”

]]> 3248 Cable Industry Sees VoIP Looming… https://ianbell.com/2003/09/03/cable-industry-sees-voip-looming/ Thu, 04 Sep 2003 01:32:29 +0000 https://ianbell.com/2003/09/03/cable-industry-sees-voip-looming/ http://news.com.com/2100-1033-982130.html

By Ben Charny Staff Writer, CNET News.com January 27, 2003, 4:00 AM PT

Read more about VoIP

A group of telecommunications giants is quietly pushing a proposal that could create hang-ups for up-and-coming Internet-telephone rivals.

At stake are rules used to divvy up the 5.2 billion unassigned phone numbers set aside for use in North America, one of the biggest potential markets for Internet, or voice over IP (VoIP), telephone services.

VoIP technology allows people to make phones calls that travel over the Internet rather than solely across wires owned by long-distance phone companies. Such calls can be made from telephone systems that tap into the Internet, and from PCs.

The cost of making such calls is significantly less than that of basic long-distance service because the calls bypass the phone companies’ lines. As a result, many large corporations and tech-savvy consumers are using VoIP to make long-distance calls.

Net telephony providers such as Vonage and Net2Phone enjoy an unfettered stream of new numbers passed down from other carriers, which they can hand out to customers as they wish. Now, Verizon Communications, BellSouth and Qwest Communications International want federal regulators to tell the newcomers to heel.

Verizon and the others raised their concerns most recently at a meeting Wednesday of the North American Numbering Council (NANC). The industry group is chartered by the Federal Communications Commission and is charged with developing policies on how to distribute telephone numbers.

If successful, some observers warn, the lobbying push could dampen the market for Internet-telephone service in the United States.

“The results could choke off the industry before it really gets going,” according to a source familiar with the ongoing debate.

The looming fight over phone number allocations comes amid a supply crunch , just as VoIP services are shaping up as a significant new challenge to both local and long-distance carriers.

Once denigrated for spotty reception more similar to that of a CB radio than that of a phone, Internet calling has improved in quality to the point where analysts expect the industry to soar over the next few years. TeleGeography , a phone industry analysis firm, estimates that there were 18 billion minutes of VoIP phone calls in 2002, or about 10 percent of all the calls made.

As VoIP makes up a bigger proportion of the overall phone market, it is poised to join a growing field of competitors that are vying for an increasingly limited phone-number pool.

Your number’s up U.S. government reports estimate that the United States, Canada, Guam, Bermuda and Trinidad will run out of 10-digit numbers by the year 2025, driven by demand for cell phones, faxes and other devices. The coming crunch has led at least one industry organization to draw up a plan for a 12-digit future that could add some 640 billion new numbers to the pool.

In the meantime, the FCC composed two conservation measures, both opposed by the phone carriers. One, “number portability,” would let people keep their phone numbers even if they switch carriers. The second would force carriers to be assigned a smaller amount of telephone numbers at a time.

Against this backdrop, some carriers said they are concerned about what they see as unorthodox number allocation practices among VoIP providers.

At the Jan. 22 NANC meeting, proponents of VoIP phone number regulation said they want agencies including the FCC to examine the Internet-phone industry’s use of “designer numbers,” among other things. Because of the nature of the Web, computer phone providers can offer customers a choice of different area codes, regardless of where they live.

“The idea is not to choke this thing off, but to explore the issues and reach some agreements so we can go forward,” said Randy Sanders, BellSouth’s director of regulatory and external affairs.

NANC members were interested enough in the problems to order a subcommittee to come up with some of the possible technical problems involved with telephone numbers and VoIP.

Others, however, have dismissed the concerns as overblown for an industry that is barely getting its legs in North America.

In a white paper called “Much Ado About Nothing,” AT&T recently argued that Internet phone providers aren’t attracting enough customers now to even pose a possible problem to be addressed.

“The sky is not falling,” AT&T wrote to the NANC in a follow-up to the white paper.

Worldwide, there were around 2.93 million cable telephony subscribers in 2001, more than the 2.5 million most analysts were predicting, according to a study last year by Allied Business Intelligence, an Oyster Bay, N.Y.-based research firm. That number was expected to almost double by the end of 2002, reaching 5.2 million subscribers, the study predicted.

By contrast, only a handful of companies sell computer telephone service in the United States, with fewer than 100,000 people now using broadband connections to make phone calls. The leading computer phone provider is Vonage, which has about 10,000 customers.

NANC and the North America Numbering Plan Administrator (NANPA) distribute phone numbers in blocks to so-called incumbent local exchange carriers (ILECs), which then transfer some of those numbers to competitive local exchange carriers, or CLECs, that ride on their lines.

Vonage representative Brooke Shultz said the company gets its telephone numbers from CLECs, although she declined to name the suppliers or the terms of the transfer deals.

Shultz dismissed the lobbying effort as a competitive tactic.

“This is really the first sort of tactic to get us regulated,” said Shultz. “We’re not misusing numbers.”

Industrywide makeover Regardless of where the industry stands now, there is no doubt of the momentum behind a new way of delivering voice communications at a fraction of the cost of traditional phone networks.

VoIP providers generally require two things–a broadband connection and either an adapter for a landline phone or a microphone and speaker device for computers.

The calls travel mostly over the Web, avoiding the toll roads that are traditional phone lines. As a result, computer phone services can offer plans with unlimited dialing and no long-distance charges. The average monthly price is $40.

VoIP’s efficiencies come through its use of packet-switching technology, which breaks up communications into small bits that are dispersed to find the fastest path across the network and recombined at the end point. Traditional telephony, by contrast, is “circuit-switched,” creating a dedicated channel for the duration of the call.

Analysts have cautioned that traditional phone companies could get squeezed out of VoIP technology. Responding to the threat, big carriers, including Verizon and Qwest, have been inking billion-dollar deals with equipment makers such as Nortel Networks, to add packet-switching capabilities. Sprint began adding packet switching to its network in 2002, after a $1.1 billion deal with Nortel. Qwest has also announced that it will adopt packet-switching technology.

Norm Bogen, a communications infrastructure and services analyst with Cahners In-Stat, expects the sale of media gateways, the equipment needed to install VoIP systems, to increase from $883 million in 2003 to $2.74 billion in 2006.

Even as the big carriers race to get into this area, however, Bogen tipped the advantage to the upstart VoIP providers.

“They are replacing the local phone company,” Bogen said.

]]> 3256 The Baby Bells Suck, Too! https://ianbell.com/2002/09/27/the-baby-bells-suck-too/ Fri, 27 Sep 2002 19:03:17 +0000 https://ianbell.com/2002/09/27/the-baby-bells-suck-too/ http://www.forbes.com/2002/09/27/0927sbc_print.html

Telecom The Bells Sing The Blues, On Cue Mark Lewis, 09.27.02, 12:16 PM ET

When a firm announces bad news, generally it crafts a news release brimming with positive spin to put the best possible light on the situation. But when SBC Communications announced its latest round of job cuts, the release went out of its way to indicate that the sky is falling.

SBC’s ( nyse SBC) statement released late Thursday announced in the very first paragraph that the firm is shedding employees and cutting capital expenditures “in response to a continued weak economy and outmoded regulation that could threaten the future viability of its telecommunications networks in many of its states.”

The stock was off 7%, to $20.46, today in morning trading, but that was a fairly mild market reaction to a firm that used the words “threaten” and “viability” in the same sentence. Clearly, investors suspect that SBC Chief Executive Edward Whitacre’s remarks were intended mostly for the U.S. Congress and the Federal Communications Commission, as part of a campaign to free the Bell regional operating firms from their regulatory burden.

Either that, or it is simply a coincidence that BellSouth (nyse: BLS – news – people ) Chief Executive Duane Ackerman and Verizon Communications (nyse: VZ – news – people ) CEO Ivan Seidenberg both popped up in Washington recently to condemn the rules that hobble the Bells–especially those regulations that force the Bells to share their facilities with competitors. The House has passed a pro-Bell bill, but its Senate prospects are uncertain.

“The decisions we make this year about telecom policies will influence the flow of billions of dollars worth of capital, the security of thousands of jobs, the speed of the economic recovery and the legacy of America’s technological leadership,” Seidenberg said in a speech last week.

As if on cue, SBC’s Whitacre yesterday provided concrete evidence that Seidenberg was not just talking through his hat. SBC lost 3 million retail access lines during the 12 months ending in August, and its wire-line revenue is falling at a rate of 6% per year. In response to this deteriorating situation, SBC said it will lay off 11,000 employees, representing about 6% of its workforce. That is in addition to the 10,000 jobs already cut.

More ominously for equipment makers like Lucent Technologies (nyse: LU – news – people ), SBC will cut its 2003 capital spending to between $5 billion and $6 billion, down from about $8 billion this year.

“When unrealistic and outmoded regulation results in our having to lay off highly trained workers and constrains our investment in our networks, it is a disservice to all local-phone users in the states we serve,” Whitacre said in the statement. “After all, our competitors are relying on our network. And if there’s a weather emergency or other problem, it’s our workers who must respond.”

Naturally, the Bells’ competitors take a different view of the situation. After BellSouth’s Ackerman called for regulatory relief on Sept. 26, AT&T (nyse: T – news – people ) issued a pungent response quoted by Dow Jones Newswires: “Every time a Bell company executive speaks, consumers better grab their wallets because behind all the ‘woe is me’ oratory is a call for a massive rate increase for American consumers.”

It is difficult indeed to find a telecom firm that is not suffering these days, and they all want Congress and the FCC to feel their pain.

———–

]]> 3942 Mobitex vs. GPRS https://ianbell.com/2002/09/26/mobitex-vs-gprs/ Thu, 26 Sep 2002 18:26:12 +0000 https://ianbell.com/2002/09/26/mobitex-vs-gprs/ A direct quote from Yours Truly in 1994, when I was building the web presence for a company that later became InfoWave Wireless Networks:

“This is stupid. Nobody’s going to want to just access their email on mobile devices — people want to surf the web from anywhere!”

Long-time FOIBers know how wrong I think I was.

MOBITEX is the un-sexy, Ericsson-proprietary data network. Rogers operates it in Canada, BellSouth in the US. It’s interesting ’cause it’s a very old network that was built from the ground-up as a data-only system, whereas GPRS, CDPD, and others are simply data abstraction layers overlaid on switched voice networks.

I think it’s probable that MOBITEX could experience a renaissance of sorts in the coming couple of years, now that people other than subscribers to this list are starting to realize that 3G is a faint, whimpering hope. It all depends upon what Ericsson does with it.

This author contends that if Ericsson were smart, they’d Open-Source MOBITEX right away. Allow anybody to build equipment, and leverage the overall market’s growth to become the preeminent supplier of MOBITEX gear.

MOBITEX is now more than 10 years old… could it finally be all growed up?

-Ian.

—— http://www.stmobiledata.com/more_on_mobitex.htm

Mobitex is poised to lead the wireless network revolution. Read on to find out more in Alison Campbell’s “Mobitex versus GPRS – the latest mobile data war?”

By Alison Campbell

It’s been operating in the UK for almost ten years, but not many mobile users may be aware of Mobitex.

A different story can be heard in the USA where the wireless data communications network has a high profile, primarily because of its involvement with the much-acclaimed success of RIM Blackberry.

As the dawning of mass-market mobile data is upon us, Mobitex is poised for market expansion and may even be viewed as a competitor to GPRS. So what does the technology have to offer and how does it compare to the giant of next-generation wireless comms?

The company behind Mobitex in the UK has been RAM Mobile Data, which was acquired at the end of 2000 (along with Tardis Mobile and Playsafe Monitoring) by Transcomm plc. The three companies have been consolidated into Transcomm UK, which is now the UK network operator for Mobitex.

The technology itself was developed by Ericsson back in the mid 1980s to address the need for mobile access to the Internet or enterprise networks. It was initially developed for use by Telia Telecom as a way of controlling mobile communications costs for the company’s fleet of field service engineers. Designed for two-way, packet-switched, data only communication – using devices such as pagers, palm-tops and PDAs – Mobitex has achieved great success in various vertical markets and now has around 30,000 users on its UK network.

In the UK, Mobitex has been targeted at the public sector, transport & distribution and the field service industry, where it competes head-on with Cognito. A recent agreement with Communication Network Interfaces (CNI) of Korea will see a new range of two-way messaging devices being developed specifically for Mobitex users. This opens up the market for Transcomm to target white-collar sectors (such as the City) and other mobile users that need secure and reliable access to mission critical applications.

Like GPRS, Mobitex offers an ‘always on, always connected’ service, but unlike GPRS it has been specifically designed to carry two-way data, quickly and securely, and not voice. The technology is not being marketed as a direct competitor for GPRS, ‘But,’ says Ben Wood, a senior analyst with Gartner Group, ‘GPRS has done Mobitex a big favour by creating awareness of the benefits of mobile data. If Transcomm can ride on the back of that they could do very well.’

Rich Pullin, Managing Director of Transcomm UK, explains his view: ‘we’re offering an alternative to GPRS but it depends on what the user wants. Mobitex has many advantages. Network performance, for example, is not hindered by voice communications but it really depends on what’s important to the user.’

The main advantage Mobitex has over GPRS is that it’s here, deployed successfully, and has been so for ten years. Most experts say that GPRS will not really be fully available until the middle of next year.

As for the technology, Mobitex is data only, which limits it from competing with anything other than the GSM aspects of GPRS. However, there’s something to be said for treating voice and data as separate solutions. Recent research indicates that 83 percent of requirements for mobile data are for short messaging services (SMS).

Mobitex offers a data transfer speed of 8kbps. GPRS, on the other hand (because it operates on fours channels), can offer transfer speeds of up to 38kbps. But voice communication requires significantly more bandwidth. So therefore, performance could be constrained by how many users are on the network at any one time. Realistically achievable data transfer speeds could be much less. The problem GPRS has it that it is being overlaid on top of GSM, which means that in busy cities and urban areas it could be difficult to achieve anything like a decent data speed.

Mobitex is also said to be an extremely secure network, a primary requirement for trading exchanges. It is one of the only networks in the UK utilised by the Police and emergency services without encryption (although encryption can be built in).

Mobitex is designed to facilitate file transfer because it is what’s termed ‘symmetric”, while GPRS is asymmetric. What this means is that Mobitex devices support an even number of time slots in the uplink as they do in the downlink. Put simply, this means it’s easy to transfer files because the available bandwidth is the same all the way along the link.

GPRS on the other hand is ideal for viewing web applications or for gaming because devices support more time slots in the downlink than the uplink.

With GPRS, users get more bandwidth, which is necessary for voice and graphically hungry applications, but this means it is also more expensive. WAP sites are typically 1 gigabyte in size, which could cost as much as £2 per viewing as pricing stand today. So for users that require a fixed cost solution, GPRS may not be ideal. The likelihood is, however, that GPRS operators will offer a choice of packages geared towards different types of user, as will Transcomm with Mobitex. Says Wood: ‘As the market evolves, network operators in both camps will have to become much more competitive by offering a choice of services and tariff options.’

Whereas GPRS is an open technology, Mobitex is a proprietary standard. There will be less service providers and systems integrators designing and building applications to run on the network. For an enterprise-wide solution, Mobitex requires some bespoke programming and bespoke application design. But mobile data comes into best effect when integrated into the business, so for corporates this shouldn’t be a problem. For the single or consumer user it might be more difficult find devices, applications and games. There seems little difference between Mobitex and GPRS on t he pricing side, but Transcomm seems determined to compete starting with a basic service at around £10 per month (same as GPRS). Handsets for both can be purchased at sub £300. But as an established standard without the benefit of pre-Christmas hype, could Mobitex ever be a threat to GPRS?

———–

]]> 3940 AOL Is Evil? https://ianbell.com/2002/09/03/aol-is-evil/ Tue, 03 Sep 2002 17:34:03 +0000 https://ianbell.com/2002/09/03/aol-is-evil/ Out with AOL, in with Jabber By Paul Festa Staff Writer, CNET News.com August 30, 2002, 12:16 PM PT http://news.com.com/2100-1023-956097.html

When America Online closed its door on efforts to standardize instant messaging, a new one may have opened for Jabber.

Jabber, the XML-based instant messaging application that interoperates with multiple IM services, is close to winning approval for its own dedicated working group within the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), a development that would elevate the technology from one of many competing IM also-rans to that of a potential industry standard.

“They’re pushing for a working group,” said Ned Freed, the IETF’s co-area director for applications and member of the group’s decision-making Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG). “I suspect we will be approving it in the very near future.”

As a condition of its merger with Time Warner, AOL was required by the Federal Communications Commission to open its instant messaging system to rivals–a condition that critics dismissed as “toothless.”

AOL spent the next few years standing by its pledge to achieve interoperability, citing its participation in the IETF standardization effort. The task force is custodian of protocols including the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and the Hyptertext Transport Protocol (HTTP).

But in June, the Internet giant acknowledged that it had shelved standardization work in favor of an approach to let rivals access its own proprietary system.

The IETF-proposed standard for instant messaging that AOL abandoned is still in progress. Dubbed SIMPLE (SIP for Instant Messaging and Presence Leveraging Extensions), it is an instant-messaging application of the group’s Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), a technology with numerous applications apart from instant messaging.

SIMPLE proponents, however diminished in strength without AOL’s backing, are putting up a fight to resist the Jabber invasion, arguing that the task force’s energies are divided enough as it is without adding another instant messaging protocol to the mix.

In fact, there is a large handful of activities related to instant messaging, variously competing with and complementary to each other, in progress under the IETF’s auspices.

In addition to SIMPLE, they include Application Exchange (APEX), a project that even its working group chair acknowledges is unlikely to prosper; the now moribund Presence and Instant Messaging Protocol (PRIM), which backers hope to revive in the future; and the Instant Messaging and Presence Protocol (IMPP), a group working on Common Presence and Instant Messaging (CPIM).

Adding to the alphabet soup Jabber’s bid is to add its own acronym to this alphabet soup: Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol XMPP.

At a recent “birds of a feather” session at the IETF’s July meeting in Yokohama, Japan, SIMPLE advocates pushed their case that a Jabber working group would amount to too many cooks in the task force’s already crowded instant messaging kitchen.

“Overall, it seemed to me that the vast majority of folks in the room were there from other IM working groups and were there to express their desire that the work not be done in the IETF,” the session’s chair wrote in a summary. “These folks seemed to want this on political-process grounds; not one expressed this desire on technical grounds.”

SIMPLE has a natural constituency among telecommunications providers, which already use SIP.

Jabber proponents argue that an XML-based protocol would find a warm reception on the Internet, where the number of XML-based documents and applications is burgeoning.

And should the IETF approve a Jabber working group, it would start out with an installed base that no other IETF instant messaging activity can match. Jabber now claims that “as many as 100,000 of its servers are running across the Internet, with millions of people using the application. Licensees of Jabber’s enterprise-grade software include AT&T, Hewlett-Packard, Walt Disney, BellSouth, France Telecom and VA Linux Systems.

“The Jabber folks came largely due to the feeling that we might want to get a group with actual deployment,” said the IETF’s Freed. “There’s a lot of appeal to the Jabber approach–and a constituency that wants to see it adopted. Having four of these (instant messaging protocols) is a bad thing, you could say, but let’s face it–the market will ultimately decide whether any of it is relevant.”

The CPIM protocol, which outlines what attributes an IETF instant messaging protocol must have, is designed to ensure interoperability among competing IETF projects. If Jabber and its competitors adhere to it, CPIM should alleviate technological, if not political, friction between Jabber and other IETF instant messaging activities.

Jabbering with others In addition, Jabber’s ability to communicate with other instant messaging systems allows it to extend an olive branch to its SIMPLE-backing opponents: Should Jabber incorporate SIMPLE into its server, a little of Jabber’s success in the real world could rub off on that standard.

Jabber–which exists as both the for-profit Jabber.com and the open-source development group the Jabber Software Foundation–has much to gain from the potential IETF working group. In addition to the prestige and possible surge in adoption that task force’s recognition would bring, Jabber backers are hoping that in exchange for ceding control of the technology to the IETF, they might get valuable technical help in areas where Jabber badly needs it–namely security and internationalization.

Having survived Yokohama, Jabber proponents are now awaiting next week’s meeting of the Internet Engineering Steering Group. That group will receive more comment before making a final decision on Jabber’s bid.

Should Jabber get the nod, it still would have a long way to go before getting the IETF’s final imprimatur.

First the working group must publish numerous working drafts on the road to internal consensus. Then the document goes into the “last call” where it is open to comment. If consensus emerges from that stage, it becomes a proposed standard. Only after another six months of evaluation can it advance to a “draft standard.” To make the leap from draft standard to standard, the protocol has to show evidence of “wide and useful deployment.”

“A lot of stuff tends to wedge at ‘proposed,’ because the amount of work required to carry it forward is substantial,” Freed noted. “So the Jabber folks have a long road to hoe. And there are a lot of things that can go wrong. If there’s a bug in a standard, the whole process resets and you go back to proposed.”

Jabber’s founder called the IETF bid a success in itself for the project and its values. “Any progress and work towards a common open IM standard on any front will benefit the entire emerging IM marketplace,” said 27-year-old Jabber founder Jeremie Miller, now a member of the Jabber Software Foundation board. “What Jabber.org has always been was a collaborative project by those interested in creating open interoperable IM technologies based on XML, and for those protocols to have gained enough popularity and use to warrant a standards effort is a sign that openness and interoperability are still deeply valued attributes on the Internet.”

———–

]]> 3926 Will AOL Go the Way of the Model T? https://ianbell.com/2002/04/22/will-aol-go-the-way-of-the-model-t/ Mon, 22 Apr 2002 22:18:14 +0000 https://ianbell.com/2002/04/22/will-aol-go-the-way-of-the-model-t/ http://www.forbes.com/2002/04/19/0419aol.html

Will AOL Go The Way Of The Model T? Mark Lewis, 04.19.02, 12:40 PM ET FORBES MAGAZINE

Is Robert Pittman following in Henry Ford’s footsteps? If so, that may not be good news for AOL Time Warner shareholders.

Ford was a revolutionary who changed the world, only to grow complacent and eventually lose his industry leadership position. His wildly successful Model T car put the horse and buggy out of business, but then Ford stuck with the Model T too long while rivals stole customers by adding bells and whistles.

Pittman, co-chief operating officer for AOL (nyse: AOL – news – people ), may be on the verge of making a similar mistake. Pittman has taken direct control of the firm’s America Online unit, which has been plagued by slow growth as Internet dial-up customers defect to rivals offering high-speed broadband connections. America Online has made slow progress in migrating its huge base of dial-up customers to its own broadband offerings.

Now AOL reportedly is retrenching. Friday’s Wall Street Journal reports that the media conglomerate “is rethinking its cornerstone strategy of promoting such broadband access nationwide.” The paper quotes Pittman to the effect that America Online should focus on getting its current customers to retain their AOL dial-up service, even after they have signed up for broadband service from a rival firm.

Apparently, Pittman has been pleasantly surprised by the number of AOL customers who have retained their dial-up service as a kind of backup to their broadband service. “A lot of companies go broke trying to speed up the consumer adoption curve,” Pittman told the Journal. Whereas AOL will happily milk its high-margin base of dial-up customers for as long as these folks are willing to keep sending in their monthly $23.90.

The problem is that as broadband gains mass acceptance, even technophobes will eventually gain the confidence to venture out beyond the reassuring confines of AOL’s walled garden. And broadband is gaining momentum. On Friday, BellSouth (nyse: BLS – news – people ) reported that it added another 108,000 digital subscriber line (DSL) customers during the first quarter, bringing its total to 729,000. Earlier this week, SBC Communications (nyse: SBC – news – people ) said it added 183,000 subscribers during the quarter to push its total to 1.5 million. The cable firms–and AOL’s own Time Warner cable unit–continue to push ahead with broadband, and EchoStar Communications (nasdaq: DISH – news – people ) has pledged to offer satellite broadband access nationwide if federal regulators will approve its proposed acquisition of DirecTV.

AOL finds itself in a tough spot, little more than a year after closing on its acquisition of Time Warner. That deal was supposed to create a content-and-distribution colossus, but the Internet distribution part of the equation has not yet worked out as promised, so the stock price has shriveled. Already there is talk on Wall Street that AOL should spin off its online unit and revert to a content-and-cable play.

Neither Pittman nor his boss, AOL Chairman Steve Case, seem eager to embrace that idea. “The promise of the merger remains intact,” Case told the Journal. “We just hit a speed bump.” AOL’s soon-to-be chief executive, Richard Parsons, also defended the merger. So it’s full speed ahead–except that Pittman seems to be keeping one foot on the brake by talking about a renewed focus on maintaining that dial-up base.

Perhaps he is correct. And that Henry Ford analogy may not be such a dire portent, since even after losing its leadership position, Ford Motor (nyse: F – news – people ) eventually moved beyond the Model T and continued to be a profitable business (at least until recently).

But when AOL acquired Time Warner, it had grander things in mind than to merely continue as a profitable firm. This merger was supposed to remake the media environment. It was all about the future, whereas dial-up service is well on the way to being a relic from the past–like the Model T. When even the stodgy old Baby Bells are talking up broadband, does Bob Pittman really want to be known as Mr. Dial-Up? He is right that AOL should make as much money as possible from dial-up before it goes away. But that hardly sounds like the centerpiece of a visionary growth strategy.

]]> 3752 The End of Ma Bell as We Know It.. https://ianbell.com/2001/09/27/the-end-of-ma-bell-as-we-know-it/ Thu, 27 Sep 2001 22:10:38 +0000 https://ianbell.com/2001/09/27/the-end-of-ma-bell-as-we-know-it/ …and I feel fine.

This is actually pretty funny, for those FOIB subscribers who remember some of the saber rattling that these two were doing against each other only a couple of months ago.

This would have very interesting permutations for the telecom biz.

-Ian.

—– http://www.internetnews.com/isp-news/article/0,,8_893021,00.html

It’s The End of Ma Bell As We Know It? By Thor Olavsrud

AT&T’s Chief Executive Officer Mike Armstrong is reportedly in talks with BellSouth about a merger of equals, according to BusinessWeek.

The magazine said AT&T (NYSE:T) sent President David Dorman to BellSouth in mid-September with the offer: AT&T will spin off AT&T Broadband and then merge its remaining telecom businesses with BellSouth, giving the combined company the heft to compete with industry giants SBC and Verizon in both long-distance and business services.

BellSouth is barred by the Telecom Act from owning large stakes in cable, which rests at the core of AT&T’s AT&T Broadband business.

According to BusinessWeek, BellSouth CEO Duane Ackerman is interested in a merger if he feels the price is right. The magazine said the deal has not yet been valued, and potential management for the combined company has not been determined. However, the magazine also reported that AT&T wants to cement a deal by October.

A number of hurdles do exist. First, BellSouth is also barred from offering long-distance services in the nine Southern states in which it offers local telephone service. BusinessWeek said AT&T is confident it can get a deal approved with conditions. Also, the wildly different market capitalizations of the two companies could put the kibosh on a “merger of equals.” If AT&T sells AT&T Broadband, the company should have a market cap of between $30 billion and $40 billion. BellSouth has a market cap of $79 billion.

In related news, The Wall Street Journal Thursday reported that Comcast Corp. is expected to sign a confidentiality agreement with AT&T that would clear the way for Comcast to revive its bid to acquire AT&T Broadband. The Journal said Comcast may sign an agreement as early as Friday.

Comcast originally refused to sign such an agreement after making a $40 billion stock swap bid for AT&T Broadband — which included the assumption of about $13.5 billion in AT&T debt — because of AT&T’s insistence on a “collusion clause” which would prevent the company from conferring with other companies interested in bidding on AT&T Broadband.

The Journal said it was unclear whether such a clause would be included in the new agreement.

If Comcast does sign an agreement, talks are expected to resume shortly thereafter.

]]> 3615 Everybody’s Favorite Shit Disturber https://ianbell.com/2001/08/07/everybodys-favorite-shit-disturber/ Wed, 08 Aug 2001 02:28:29 +0000 https://ianbell.com/2001/08/07/everybodys-favorite-shit-disturber/ >> “When the economy turns into a 1929 depression, we’ll probably miss our numbers,” he said.>>> Nice. -Ian. ——– http://dailynews.yahoo.com/htx/cn/20010807/tc/qwest_ceo_reiterates_outlook_1 .html Tuesday August 07 07:00 PM […]]]> Joe Nacchio is a great guy. Once quoted as saying he had “more bandwidth than God” he’s always good for a line or two. This article is no exception.

>>>
“When the economy turns into a 1929 depression, we’ll probably miss our numbers,” he said.>>>

Nice.

-Ian.

——– http://dailynews.yahoo.com/htx/cn/20010807/tc/qwest_ceo_reiterates_outlook_1 .html

Tuesday August 07 07:00 PM EDT

Qwest CEO reiterates outlook By Margaret Kane CNET News.com

BOSTON–Qwest Communications International CEO Joe Nacchio held fast to his company’s previously issued outlook Tuesday, saying that the company has no intention of reducing estimates anytime soon.

Speaking at the U.S. Bancorp Piper Jaffray conference here, Nacchio said the company sees cash earnings per share between $1.10 and $1.20 for 2001, and at $1.40 for 2002. Revenue should grow between 14 percent and 15 percent in 2002, and earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization should grow between 15 percent and 17 percent, he said.

Of course, there are a few factors that could prevent the company from meeting those goals, Nacchio added.

“When the economy turns into a 1929 depression, we’ll probably miss our numbers,” he said.

The company could also miss numbers if it is unable to get permission to enter the long-distance market in any of the 14 states in which it currently offers local services. But he said he expects to get approval to offer services in the first state early in 2002.

Nacchio seemed to think he needed to reaffirm guidance to counter “whisper numbers” about his company’s financial position on Wall Street. He railed against a “vendetta” against Qwest by a “major firm on Wall Street,” urging investors to “read more than one report.”

Qwest’s stock plunged in June after analysts at Morgan Stanley said the company may be using accounting techniques to improve its earnings growth. Nacchio vigorously defended the numbers at the time, and most of the other Wall Street analysts have come down on his side.

But new concerns have arisen over the way the company accounts for capacity sales and the costs associated with those sales. Critics have complained that Qwest books sales of capacity as revenue, but treats the costs associated with buying or building the capacity as a capital expense, keeping it off the income statement.

Other factors have also hurt the stock. Qwest competitor Global Crossing last week cut its growth targets, and earlier in the year, BellSouth sold back to Qwest 22.2 million of the 74 million shares that it owned in the company.

But Thomas Weisel Partners analyst Jim Linnehan said Monday that the sell-off in recent weeks has created a buying opportunity in the stock.

Nacchio said it was “amazing” that his company’s shares were trading at a discount to Baby Bells, pointing out that “we are an RBOC (regional Bell operating company).” Qwest owns US West as well as a fiber-optic network, making it a hybrid telecommunications company.

“You’ve got a good industry slowdown happening, but there are people who’ll do well,” he said. “It isn’t like we’ll all go under.”

Looking forward, Nacchio said his company’s growth will come from both its long-distance and regional businesses. The long-distance business, which makes up only about 30 percent of Qwest’s revenues, should see 30 percent revenue growth in the next year, while the company’s traditional regional bell operating business should see revenues grow by 8 percent.

]]> 3603 Re: VoDSL Poised for Comeback? https://ianbell.com/2001/07/24/re-vodsl-poised-for-comeback/ Wed, 25 Jul 2001 00:31:57 +0000 https://ianbell.com/2001/07/24/re-vodsl-poised-for-comeback/ Oops. I need a Glossary when I speak Telco:

– UNE (Unbundled Network Elements) — wholesale features present on switches like callerID, Call Waiting, Call Forwarding, etc. – RBOC — Regional Bell Operating Company(ies) like Pacific Bell, Verizon – FCC — Federal Communications Commission (Federal Regulators) – VoDSL — Voice over Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) – VoIP — Voice over Internet Protocol – TDM — Time-Division Multiplexing (used to refer to the plain old telephone network) – PUC — Public Utilities Commission (Regional Regulators) – AT&T — Sucks.

-Ian.

On 7/24/01 3:25 PM, “Kelly Tompkins” wrote:

> Hey Ian, a few less acronyms…
>
>
> Thanks
>
> At 03:09 PM 7/24/01 -0700, Ian Andrew Bell wrote:
>>
>> …maybe.
>>
>> But it’ll still have to compete with a host of newly-available products.
>>
>> AT&T for example seems to be rolling out consumer services using UNEs
>> (Unbundled Network Elements — reselling features wholesaled from RBOCs)
>> which are all of a sudden a practicable reality thanks to the FCC.
>>
>> The problems facing VoDSL and residential VoIP are still twofold:
>>
>> 1) As long as there is no arbitrage-based, on-demand global hop-off network
>> most of the carriage of traffic will still be over the good ol’ TDM
>> network. As a result, the cost will be high.
>>
>> — Jeff Pulver says he is fixing this, don’t ya Jeff?
>>
>> 2) As the RBOCs are attempting to become Long Distance companies, and the
>> FCC and PUCs are forcing them to supply their competitors with whole-
>> saled voice services, bigger players such as AT&T will succumb to the
>> appeal of simply reselling TDM-based RBOC services.
>>
>> -Ian.
>>
>> ——
>>
>> http://dailynews.yahoo.com/htx/cn/20010723/tc/voice-over-dsl_getting_new_lea
>> se_on_life_1.html
>>
>> Monday July 23 02:00 PM EDT
>>
>> Voice-over-DSL getting new lease on life
>> By John Borland CNET News.com
>>
>> One of the technological casualties of the telecommunications collapse is
>> gaining a second wind as companies again look for cheap ways to offer voice
>> services over high-speed Net connections.
>>
>> Voice-over-DSL (VoDSL), which uses a single regular phone wire to offer the
>> equivalent of many phone lines, once teetered on the edge of mainstream
>> technology before falling back into obscurity. At a time when finding
>> investment capital was easy, start-up phone companies touted it as a way to
>> break into the local phone companies’ business cheaply and easily.
>>
>> That never happened. The bottom dropped out of the telecommunications
>> market, and the start-up network companies found themselves too busy trying
>> to stay alive to test and offer new technology. In addition, the technology
>> did not work quite as well as advertised, analysts say.
>>
>> But the voice technology appears to be on the cusp of a renaissance.
>> Northeastern phone and data company Broadview Networks is starting to offer
>> the service Monday, with business customers already signed up. AT&T is
>> signaling that it is ready to throw its weight behind the technology as it
>> seeks a new way to connect directly to consumers.
>>
>> “I believe we are entering phase two of voice-over-DSL,” said Teresa
>> Mastrangelo, an analyst with RHK, a communications research and consulting
>> firm. “This year has been where carriers have gone back to vendors asking
>> for (changes in the equipment). Now we’re starting to see the vendors
>> deliver.”
>>
>> A resurgence of the voice-over-broadband technology could boost local phone
>> competition, which has been one of the hardest-hit sectors in the
>> telecommunications meltdown. AT&T and smaller phone companies able to pull
>> together a bundle of voice and Net services could revive pressure on the big
>> local phone companies, which have seen their competition diminish, and
>> provide new options for consumers.
>>
>> VoDSL technology allows the bandwidth of a high-speed Internet connection to
>> be split into multiple “virtual” phone lines, making a single physical
>> copper phone wire capable of carrying several simultaneous calls. Thus, a
>> small business could have many phone lines, plus enough remaining bandwidth
>> for Net access.
>>
>> Under this scenario, a business might call Broadview for its local phone
>> service instead of Verizon Communications (NYSE:VZ – news). The single phone
>> line could be sliced the way the customer wanted, with four phone lines and
>> a fast data connection, or with 10 phone lines and less bandwidth available
>> for surfing the Net.
>>
>> The technology is attractive to business customers, at least in theory,
>> because it allows them to have Web access and a few phone lines at
>> relatively low cost. Broadview’s prices, for example, range between 11
>> percent and 30 percent lower than comparable offers from Verizon, depending
>> on how many phone lines are ordered. The technology also reduces costs for
>> carriers.
>>
>> Making it happen
>> But actual installations, beyond trial projects, have failed to materialize.
>> Analyst firm TeleChoice estimates that fewer than 10,000 DSL lines in the
>> United States carry voice signals–a far cry from some predictions that
>> estimated the technology would reach several hundred thousand lines by the
>> end of last year.
>>
>> Several companies manufacture the hardware required to split a DSL
>> connection into voice lines, including Jetstream Communications, TollBridge
>> Technologies, CopperCom, General Bandwidth and Accelerated Networks.
>>
>> Lacking demand from carriers, some of these VoDSL gear makers have shifted
>> their strategy to include new technologies. For example, CopperCom last year
>> embraced so-called softswitch technology, or software that is capable of
>> routing phone calls and other voice features typically handled by massive
>> and expensive hardware. Others have tried to kick-start the VoDSL market
>> with newer versions of their hardware.
>>
>> Most, analysts say, have been responsive to carrier concerns about
>> reliability and features and have spent the past year working on these
>> concerns.
>>
>> “Technically it has worked now for some time,” said Ron Nash, vice president
>> of marketing for CopperCom, one of the companies Broadview is using to
>> supply the technology. “But it has taken some additional work to get it
>> ready” for the carriers’ needs, he added.
>>
>> In New York, Broadview says the technology has finally reached the point
>> where it’s ready for customers. Broadview is a company with more than
>> 100,000 customers across four states in the northeastern United States. It’s
>> been testing the VoDSL service for several months and already has 30
>> business customers, representing several thousand phone lines, signed up to
>> use the service in New York, the company says.
>>
>> “We think the first real ‘killer app’ on DSL is voice,” said George Holland,
>> Broadview’s executive vice president of marketing. “This is what people have
>> been asking for for two years, and we’re finally able to deliver.”
>>
>> Passing the test?
>> Although it’s still early, Broadview’s first test customers say the
>> technology is doing the trick.
>>
>> “We’re very happy with it,” said Charles Seideman, the owner of Done Deal, a
>> wholesale distributor in New York that has used the new VoDSL service for
>> about six weeks. The company had no particular desire to experiment with new
>> technology, but Broadview was able to set up the system quickly after
>> another phone company went out of business, he said. “We needed faster
>> access, and they were there at the right place at the right time.”
>>
>> AT&T isn’t quite to that point of delivering. But the consumer phone
>> division has said it will use the DSL network it recently bought from
>> bankrupt NorthPoint Communications to offer voice services, as it loses
>> access to the cable network it originally bought for this purpose.
>>
>> Analysts say some of the big local phone companies have also experimented
>> with the technology in recent months and are expected to announce some
>> vendor choices relatively soon.
>>
>> Not everyone in the industry is as sanguine about the technology’s return,
>> however.
>>
>> TeleChoice’s Adam Guglielmo, who has watched the hype evaporate during the
>> past few years, says he’s not convinced the equipment makers have satisfied
>> carriers’ technical concerns. Moreover, it will take a big backer such as
>> AT&T to push the technology to the mainstream, and it’s not yet clear how
>> strong AT&T’s support will be, he added.
>>
>> The alternative phone carriers still will have to deal with resistance from
>> the big local phone companies, from which they still must lease the basic
>> phone lines to offer DSL services. Many of the competing phone and DSL
>> companies have said that the Bell companies’ resistance had proved to be one
>> of the biggest hurdles slowing their business progress. Some have even filed
>> suits against companies such as BellSouth and SBC Communications.
>>
>> “I think the opportunity is there. The business case for the services, if
>> you can get them to work, is definitely there,” Guglielmo said. “But it’s
>> been slow going.”
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
>>
>
>
>
>
>
> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
>
>

]]> 3579 VoDSL Poised for Comeback? https://ianbell.com/2001/07/24/vodsl-poised-for-comeback/ Wed, 25 Jul 2001 00:09:06 +0000 https://ianbell.com/2001/07/24/vodsl-poised-for-comeback/ …maybe.

But it’ll still have to compete with a host of newly-available products.

AT&T for example seems to be rolling out consumer services using UNEs (Unbundled Network Elements — reselling features wholesaled from RBOCs) which are all of a sudden a practicable reality thanks to the FCC.

The problems facing VoDSL and residential VoIP are still twofold:

1) As long as there is no arbitrage-based, on-demand global hop-off network most of the carriage of traffic will still be over the good ol’ TDM network. As a result, the cost will be high.

— Jeff Pulver says he is fixing this, don’t ya Jeff?

2) As the RBOCs are attempting to become Long Distance companies, and the FCC and PUCs are forcing them to supply their competitors with whole- saled voice services, bigger players such as AT&T will succumb to the appeal of simply reselling TDM-based RBOC services.

-Ian.

——

http://dailynews.yahoo.com/htx/cn/20010723/tc/voice-over-dsl_getting_new_lea se_on_life_1.html

Monday July 23 02:00 PM EDT

Voice-over-DSL getting new lease on life By John Borland CNET News.com

One of the technological casualties of the telecommunications collapse is gaining a second wind as companies again look for cheap ways to offer voice services over high-speed Net connections.

Voice-over-DSL (VoDSL), which uses a single regular phone wire to offer the equivalent of many phone lines, once teetered on the edge of mainstream technology before falling back into obscurity. At a time when finding investment capital was easy, start-up phone companies touted it as a way to break into the local phone companies’ business cheaply and easily.

That never happened. The bottom dropped out of the telecommunications market, and the start-up network companies found themselves too busy trying to stay alive to test and offer new technology. In addition, the technology did not work quite as well as advertised, analysts say.

But the voice technology appears to be on the cusp of a renaissance. Northeastern phone and data company Broadview Networks is starting to offer the service Monday, with business customers already signed up. AT&T is signaling that it is ready to throw its weight behind the technology as it seeks a new way to connect directly to consumers.

“I believe we are entering phase two of voice-over-DSL,” said Teresa Mastrangelo, an analyst with RHK, a communications research and consulting firm. “This year has been where carriers have gone back to vendors asking for (changes in the equipment). Now we’re starting to see the vendors deliver.”

A resurgence of the voice-over-broadband technology could boost local phone competition, which has been one of the hardest-hit sectors in the telecommunications meltdown. AT&T and smaller phone companies able to pull together a bundle of voice and Net services could revive pressure on the big local phone companies, which have seen their competition diminish, and provide new options for consumers.

VoDSL technology allows the bandwidth of a high-speed Internet connection to be split into multiple “virtual” phone lines, making a single physical copper phone wire capable of carrying several simultaneous calls. Thus, a small business could have many phone lines, plus enough remaining bandwidth for Net access.

Under this scenario, a business might call Broadview for its local phone service instead of Verizon Communications (NYSE:VZ – news). The single phone line could be sliced the way the customer wanted, with four phone lines and a fast data connection, or with 10 phone lines and less bandwidth available for surfing the Net.

The technology is attractive to business customers, at least in theory, because it allows them to have Web access and a few phone lines at relatively low cost. Broadview’s prices, for example, range between 11 percent and 30 percent lower than comparable offers from Verizon, depending on how many phone lines are ordered. The technology also reduces costs for carriers.

Making it happen But actual installations, beyond trial projects, have failed to materialize. Analyst firm TeleChoice estimates that fewer than 10,000 DSL lines in the United States carry voice signals–a far cry from some predictions that estimated the technology would reach several hundred thousand lines by the end of last year.

Several companies manufacture the hardware required to split a DSL connection into voice lines, including Jetstream Communications, TollBridge Technologies, CopperCom, General Bandwidth and Accelerated Networks.

Lacking demand from carriers, some of these VoDSL gear makers have shifted their strategy to include new technologies. For example, CopperCom last year embraced so-called softswitch technology, or software that is capable of routing phone calls and other voice features typically handled by massive and expensive hardware. Others have tried to kick-start the VoDSL market with newer versions of their hardware.

Most, analysts say, have been responsive to carrier concerns about reliability and features and have spent the past year working on these concerns.

“Technically it has worked now for some time,” said Ron Nash, vice president of marketing for CopperCom, one of the companies Broadview is using to supply the technology. “But it has taken some additional work to get it ready” for the carriers’ needs, he added.

In New York, Broadview says the technology has finally reached the point where it’s ready for customers. Broadview is a company with more than 100,000 customers across four states in the northeastern United States. It’s been testing the VoDSL service for several months and already has 30 business customers, representing several thousand phone lines, signed up to use the service in New York, the company says.

“We think the first real ‘killer app’ on DSL is voice,” said George Holland, Broadview’s executive vice president of marketing. “This is what people have been asking for for two years, and we’re finally able to deliver.”

Passing the test? Although it’s still early, Broadview’s first test customers say the technology is doing the trick.

“We’re very happy with it,” said Charles Seideman, the owner of Done Deal, a wholesale distributor in New York that has used the new VoDSL service for about six weeks. The company had no particular desire to experiment with new technology, but Broadview was able to set up the system quickly after another phone company went out of business, he said. “We needed faster access, and they were there at the right place at the right time.”

AT&T isn’t quite to that point of delivering. But the consumer phone division has said it will use the DSL network it recently bought from bankrupt NorthPoint Communications to offer voice services, as it loses access to the cable network it originally bought for this purpose.

Analysts say some of the big local phone companies have also experimented with the technology in recent months and are expected to announce some vendor choices relatively soon.

Not everyone in the industry is as sanguine about the technology’s return, however.

TeleChoice’s Adam Guglielmo, who has watched the hype evaporate during the past few years, says he’s not convinced the equipment makers have satisfied carriers’ technical concerns. Moreover, it will take a big backer such as AT&T to push the technology to the mainstream, and it’s not yet clear how strong AT&T’s support will be, he added.

The alternative phone carriers still will have to deal with resistance from the big local phone companies, from which they still must lease the basic phone lines to offer DSL services. Many of the competing phone and DSL companies have said that the Bell companies’ resistance had proved to be one of the biggest hurdles slowing their business progress. Some have even filed suits against companies such as BellSouth and SBC Communications.

“I think the opportunity is there. The business case for the services, if you can get them to work, is definitely there,” Guglielmo said. “But it’s been slow going.”

]]> 3578