DSL comes into focus, Pac Bell plans service, U S West drafts details >BY BETH SNYDER, Switching & Transmission Editor

U S West upped the ante in the digital subscriber line game last week, while Pacific Telesis tossed in its chips and promised to follow suit. The Western telcos now lead the charge for DSL service by the Bell regional holding companies, with U S West offering high-bit-rate DSL service now and Pac Bell pledging asymmetrical DSL in September.

U S West's !nterprise data division laid out the details of the single-pair HDSL service it leaked last week (Telephony, Jan. 20, page 6) and revealed its first customer. !nterprise's DSL plan is available in 14 cities across U S West's 14-state territory and includes four classes of service.

Subscribers can choose from ISDN DSL at 128 kb/s with local area network or continuous Internet connections, or secure HDSL at bit rates up to 704 kb/s with LAN or Internet connections.

Specific pricing is being handled on a case-by-case basis for initial deployment, but it ranges from $75 a month without Internet features to $175 a month for a fully managed service with Internet access. !nterprise is using Ascend Communications' solution for ISDN DSL and both PairGain Technologies' and Cisco's equipment for its HDSL system.

The Davis County School District in Utah has already bought 200 HDSL lines for home and campus access to the school's intranet. Of the new lines, 152 are new and 48 are replacement 56 kb/s frame relay circuits. The school district's plans call for 600 lines by the end of the year.

"What I have been most impressed with in our work with !nterprise is their extremely aggressive nature," said Christine Heckart, vice president of TeleChoice, Verona, N.J. "Internally, they have said, 'We want to be aggressive with ADSL, even if our own frame relay users migrate to it.'" Meanwhile, Pacific Bell is expected to begin offering ADSL service in 10 central offices in California in September. Paula Reinman, director of product marketing for DSL services, would not say which offices or if they are located near each other.

Brett Azuma, an analyst with Dataquest in San Jose and a former Pacific Bell employee, said a saturation deployment in a small area would make the most sense, perhaps in Silicon Valley. The Pacific Bell ADSL plan will use Alcatel Telecom systems and cost roughly $75 to $100.

An incorrect report quoted Pacific Bell Chief Executive Officer David Dorman as saying while the telco pushes ADSL, it will back away from its ISDN plan. That is untrue, Reinman said. Pacific Bell will continue to aggressively market ISDN.

"ISDN is the only one available right now, and it's switchable, so it's still the best choice for some customers' needs," she said.

However, Pacific Bell hasn't been pushing ISDN for at least a year, running only about a half-dozen advertising spots last year, Azuma said. Word-of-mouth has been a huge driver in ISDN, he said. Pacific Bell had a 92.4% increase in the number of lines-up to 101,000-even without the hype.

Regarding the two DSL presentations coming so closely: "U S West's announcement will flush other telco plans out of the bushes," said Kieran Taylor, broadband consultant with TeleChoice. "Pacific Bell may have been a reaction to that. They want to make sure no one thinks they're asleep at the switch."