THE FUTURE AS SEEN THROUGH TECHNOLOGY

FILLING THE ‘T-CHASM’

While customers with fiber access live high on the hog, more than 90% of businesses remain dependent on copper. As a result, their symmetrical high-speed access options have been limited to SDSL offerings from CLECs, an expensive T-1 line that delivers 1.54 Mb/s or a more expensive T-3 line that delivers 45 Mb/s.

Symmetricom is trying to address the bandwidth gap between T-1 and T-3 with its GoWide Enterprise and GoWide 9.2 Mb/s offerings. The products use the G.shdsl standard to let carriers provide customers with a copper-based, high-speed solution over a single copper pair. GoWide 9.2 Mb/s was developed by Telmax, a company Symmetricom bought last month.

Using bonding techniques to combine from one to eight phone lines, the GoWide Enterprise integrated access device creates a single circuit that delivers data rates up to 15 Mb/s, ideal for WAN connections to remote facilities. That's three times faster than the speeds offered by any other commercially available DSL products, though other vendors are expected to introduce similar products in the future, according to Ron Westfall, analyst of broadband infrastructure with Current Analysis.

The GoWide 9.2 Mb/s customer premises modem combines G.shdsl and inverse multiplexing over ATM to deliver access speeds of 9.2 Mb/s — bandwidth previously reserved for fiber — and significant reach.
— Donny Jackson
www.symmetricom.com

A FIREWALL FOR VOICE

The smartest industries tend not to repeat history's mistakes. But by exchanging calls using the emerging session initiation protocol (SIP) standard — and at the same time opening their networks to attack from the outside world — voice-over-IP carriers are heading down the same path as their circuit-switched brethren that started life with closed proprietary networks.

Jasomi Networks aims to make sure that VoIP carriers don't have to revert to the public switched network. The company's PeerPoint is designed to enforce call-level access control on all voice packets. The result is a peering product that lets carriers pass SIP-based calls at wire speed while protecting internal network flows. In addition, PeerPoint protects carrier networks while completing calls from the Internet and from instant messaging services.

“The VoIP islands right now can connect, but only through the [public network],” said Dan Freedman, CEO of Jasomi Networks. “If you carry 1 million minutes per month to a place like Argentina, it gets very expensive very fast.” Indeed, Jasomi is relying on business case considerations to sell the product. Each box costs about $120,000 but has a return on investment as short as 90 days. “We're finding no interest in anything with an ROI of six months or more,” Freedman said.

As a topical bonus, PeerPoint lets carriers comply with CALEA call forwarding requirements. As Freedman explained, “We didn't have a CALEA focus originally, but after Sept. 11, everyone wants it.”
Vince Vittore
www.jasomi.com