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Channelized gear may make deployment worthwhile for previously uninterested small business customers
Usually, cheap talk is something to be frowned upon. But the prospect of voice over digital subscriber line (VoDSL) enabled by a new breed of specialized switching systems is music to the ears of competitive and incumbent local exchange carriers (CLECs and ILECs) that have been scratching their heads over the mismatch between the cost of DSL deployment and the relatively limited revenue opportunity of basic high-speed Internet access.
Proponents say this technology will be ideal for small businesses, a rich but thus far unreachable market segment for many service providers. "Voice over DSL opens up more than a million businesses to us," says Gary Williams, vice president of strategic marketing for integrated communications provider GST Telecommunications Inc. (Vancouver, Wash.), which operates primarily in the West. It wasn't cost-effective, Williams says, for CLECs such as GST to deliver a T1 (1.544 Mbit/s) to businesses for just three or four lines, forcing them to completely surrender the market for small-business voice revenue. Analysts estimate that market to be anywhere from $35 billion to $50 billion in the United States alone.
DSL's economic prospects have been improved profoundly this year by the introduction of technology that enables providers to offer a channelized mix of voice, data and even video...