Going the distance: GoDigital extends reach of DSL

Tackling the speed and availability issues of DSL, GoDigital Networks this week is expected to unveil a product line that will allow carriers to extend DSL services by at least 25 miles.

"We're utilizing DSL technology to help carriers bring both competitive voice and high-speed data access out to suburban and rural areas," said Dennis Haar, the recently named president and CEO of GoDigital.

The company's new DSL infrastructure products, which include GDSL-8 for DSL technology and GDSL BRI 3 for ISDN DSL (IDSL) connections, already have attracted 80 customers, including Alltel, BCTel Tellus, CenturyTel, GTE and U S West. Almost 400 new subscriber lines are added daily, according to sources at GoDigital.

The GDSL-8 is an attempt to "leverage the existing copper fabric," Haar said. It turns a copper pair into eight digitized POTS lines, creating eight virtual lines and guaranteeing high-speed modem access and there is no degradation over the copper pairs, he said.

GoDigital teamed with Copper Mountain to produce the GDSL BRI 3, which triples the number of IDSL or basic rate interface lines a carrier can run up to 25 miles from the central office.

"An overwhelming number of Internet connections are made through dial-up modems, as opposed to DSL," said Frank Akers, chairman and chief development officer of GoDigital. "We're going to make that connection much better."

Rounding out the new offerings is GoDigital's Automated Loop Testing, which lets telcos remotely test copper pairs and eliminates truck rolls. Carriers use ALT to test lines on a preventive basis and to detect problems on a line, Akers said.

Incumbent local exchange carriers (ILECs) will jump at the chance to extend their reach and offer DSL services to more customers, said Lynda Starr, senior research director at Probe Research. "They have a huge base of embedded copper, and meanwhile, they have cable modem - and they will have [competitive] LECs - competing with them," she said. "Their goal is to get it out to as many people as they can and do so as economically as they can."

DSL is at the point of no return, as every week is flooded with more rollouts, developments and improvements. Last week was no different with another voice-over-DSL rollout and an alliance between Nortel Networks and Promatory Communications.

TollBridge Technologies finally proclaimed its equipment rollout with MGC Communications. MGC has TollBridge's IP-based voice-over-DSL TB200 local exchange gateway installed in central offices (COs) in Las Vegas, where the provider will announce general availability of the service this week, said Nield Montgomery, president and CEO of MGC. MGC also plans to offer the service to business and residential customers in its other markets.

The company will not market the service to customers as voice over DSL, but will market the services it enables. "We are not telling our customers about how we are offering the services, because they really don't care how the service is created," Montgomery said. "All they really want is a product with good quality at a good price."

Regardless of how it is marketed to customers, an enormous demand for voice-over-DSL products exists today, said Jim Grady, vice president of marketing for TollBridge. "There is plenty of demand to keep all of the players in this space busy - and we plan to win our unfair share."

Meanwhile, Nortel and Promatory signed an OEM agreement that enables Nortel to market Promatory's Intelligent Multiservice Access System with Nortel's UE-9000 integrated access platform, 1 Meg Modem and the Shasta broadband service node.

"Speed is as important as being able to offer service level agreements and other value adds," said Scott Bell, director of product marketing for Nortel. The IMAS supports several ATM quality-of-service levels and several varieties of DSL. "The Promatory product brings a smart DSLAM to Nortel that they really needed," said Andrew Cray, a research analyst with The Aberdeen Group.