Convergence gets a lifeline

SBC, Broadwing give concept reprieve after AT&T bolts AT&T's tacit admission that it can't provide a converged voice, data and video service over its existing cable plant should have put a nail in convergence's coffin. But an unlikely pair of sources is declaring reports of the concept's death as premature.

During the last two weeks, both SBC Communications' Pacific Bell and the Cincinnati Bell unit of Broadwing announced aggressive - though limited - trials of services that eventually will combine data and video over the same network. And in Pacific Bell's case, the goal is also to provide voice services in a network configuration that will put massive bandwidth on the doorstep of every user.

Under a deal with Catellus Development, Pacific Bell will build a fiberbased infrastructure for the Mission Bay, Calif., development, a 300-acre patch of land just south of the baseball stadium bearing the RBOC's name. The development, which will include 5 million square feet of commercial space and more than 6000 residential units, is geared toward a high-end demographic that certainly won't represent typical users but also won't be as price-sensitive as the norm.

Along those same lines, Pacific Bell will be providing a network that could be described modestly as high-end.

Pacific Bell plans to test an ATM passive optical networking (APON) architecture in the development, which initially will be served by a DSL-based platform. APON essentially gives residents a direct connection to an ATM switch via fiber, providing users upstream and downstream speeds that start at 5 Mb/s.

"We're not sure what they're going to do with all that bandwidth, but we're sure they're going to come up with something," said Dianne Giacovelli, Pacific Bell's project director for business communication service. "It's a perfect location for us to try this because of the density."

Pacific Bell estimates that with the high-end demographic the development will attract, about 95% of the residents will have PCs.

Initially, Pacific Bell will market voice and data over the same fiber network with direct broadcast satellite video added in at the customer premises with SBC reselling DirecTV service. Using what the company calls a walled garden concept, Pacific Bell anticipates being able to deploy applications such as interactive video games and a communitybased intranet. Pacific Bell also will offer Web hosting to community members.

"You could have a lot of applications as a private intranet. You could do education and lots of hyper local content," Giacovelli said.

Initial commercial and residential tenants will occupy the project by early 2002. By 2004, Pacific Bell intends to be delivering video over the same fiber network."It's not a technical problem. It's a regulatory issue," said Giacovelli, noting that Pacific Bell will be required to get a cable franchise for the area.

Though its deployment plans are not as aggressive as Pacific Bell's, Broadwing will test asymmetrical DSL-based video services, providing more evidence that convergence may not be dead just yet. Through its ZoomTown subsidiary, the company has offered Intertainer's video-on-demand service to about 500 customers for the past nine months. That service will move to the TV through a deal with Microsoft, which will provide codecs, and uniView, which is supplying set-top boxes.

"It's just another entertainment option for our customers," said Rob Pickering, chief technology executive at ZoomTown.

While not the same quality as customers anticipate from cable, the Intertainer service is designed to provide users with more functionality, including the ability to stop, rewind and fast-forward video.

Currently, ZoomTown offers two varieties of DSL service, a 756 kb/s service and a 1 Mb/s service. Eventually, the TV-based service could be packaged as a separate level. "We are looking at different ways of delivering the Intertainer service around speeds and quality of service," Pickering said."We haven't made any decision on how that's going to look."

The Broadwing and Pacific Bell announcements come at a time when some vendors are showing renewed interest in telco-oriented video. Pace Micro Technology has developed a DSL-based home gateway that lets U.S. carriers deliver video and interactive services over their existing copper wires.