Just another face in DSL crowd?: TI's sudden visibility seen as a plus, not as a market driver

Texas Instruments made a big splash last year when it acquired Amati and, along with it, proprietary control of discrete multitone line coding for asymmetrical digital subscriber line systems.

Concurrent with the Amati acquisition, TI has struck a joint development deal with ADSL developer Westell. And just a few weeks ago, TI, Alcatel and Analog Devices agreed to develop interoperable DSL equipment in an effort to forge industrywide standards.

Still, the effects of TI's activity on the industry are difficult to gauge. Several announcements have been made regarding interoperability and systems development partnerships for DSL, but it is unclear whether TI's emergence is driving others to act or if the company is following a general trend.

Rockwell Semiconductor is one of TI's primary competitors that make the silicon chips that power DSL systems. Such vendor-to-vendor relationships are key to the future of the industry, said Raouf Halim, vice president and general manager of Rockwell's network access division. "Potential lies in offering consumers very high-speed access, but it relies on lots of partnerships," Halim said.

Two examples are Rockwell's relationship with Northern Telecom for developing consumer-oriented DSL equipment and a new deal with PairGain announced last week.

Those relationships stem from Rockwell's goal to pair its modem expertise with telephone network equipment, Halim said.

For Motorola, which competes with TI in the chipset arena, TI's emergence came as no surprise.

"If you're a player in the analog modem field, you want to be a player in DSL modems," said Rick Hall, strategic planner for Motorola's broadband operations group. "I wouldn't be surprised to see all the major semiconductor players enter the DSL market."

TI's recent announcements do not indicate a different tack in attacking the market but a different approach in publicizing activity, Hall said. Motorola is developing similar relationships, and semiconductor manufacturers are working to increase chip capabilities while reducing power requirements to deliver maximum functionality in less space.

"We're working on the same sort of issues," Hall said. "We just have a different approach to it."

>From TI's perspective, its sudden visibility in the market is misleading. James Collinge, marketing manager for TI's access products, pointed out that TI had been working with Amati since 1996, which led to the eventual acquisition.

"Interoperability is something we recognized would be important early last year," Collinge said.

TI's highly visible Amati buyout lends a great deal of credibility to DSL in general, according to Greg Langdon, marketing manager for Efficient Networks, a customer premises data equipment vendor.

In other DSL news, Efficient last week announced a joint venture with central office vendor Diamond Lane. TI's emergence may help push DSL into incumbent's networks more quickly, said Ray DeRenzo, Diamond Lane's senior business development director.

The Bell companies "have the real distribution muscle," DeRenzo said. "Every time another major company [gets into DSL], it causes the real distribution arm in the marketplace to get closer to major deployment."

The major semiconductor players make no bones about the fact that they're eager to compete as the market develops, but interoperability is a necessity to push DSL to mass-market status. Don't expect all the major players to become bosom buddies in the effort, but Rockwell's Halim said the standards bodies-particularly the International Telecommunication Union and the Universal ADSL Working Group-will be important media.

"No one wants to see a repeat of the 56K war," Halim said.

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