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WASHINGTON - A generation of digital-subscriber-line chip sets and service trials could be scrapped if a coalition of PC companies and local telephone providers succeeds in a bid to deploy a DSL variant to be formally launched at ComNet this week. A push from an alliance with the clout to to roll out both modems and services could set a much-needed direction for the xDSL industry. But last week, analysts and long-time DSL players wondered at what cost.
The new Digital Subscriber Line Special Interest Group (DSL SIG) will leverage proposals made by a group led by Microsoft Corp. and Cisco Systems Inc. at last summer's Supercomm show. Though coalition principals Microsoft, Intel Corp. and Compaq Computer Corp. would not discuss the impending announcement, sources predicted it would involve consumer-oriented asymmetric DSLs using the Point-toPoint Protocol over asynchronous transfer mode. Sources said there is no guarantee whose technology the alliance may adopt.
The coalition-which includes four incumbent local-exchange carriers and GTE Corp.-wants to embed DSL subscriber modem technology within desktop PCs. It will therefore endorse emerging "splitterless" approaches, which sacrifice some downstream speed to allow analog voice phone service with no expensive filter outside the home, where digital service is carried from the local copper loop. A POTS splitter separates out a 4-kHz region of a copperpair bandwidth at the dc end of the band.
In recent months, several proposals have emerged within a new G.Lite working group in the T1-El standards body for splitterless service. Rockwell Semiconductor Systems has proposed a consumer DSL, or CDSL, while Globespan Semiconductor...