GTE launches ADSL: Carrier focuses on multitenant setups

After nearly two years of trials in Southern California, GTE Communications Corp. is offering its first commercial asymmetrical digital subscriber line services.

The carrier has signed a three-year contract with Westell Technologies and agreed to use the vendor's carrierless amplitude/phase modulation-based ADSL, rate-adaptive DSL (RADSL) modems and DSL access multiplexers (DSLAMs).

GTE will offer the residential and business services, called ADSL OnSite, to 1000 residences in an apartment complex in Marina Del Rey.

The offering is priced to include unlimited Internet access, e-mail and news group memberships, 5 Mbytes of drive space on a network server for users' Web pages, an ADSL modem rental and around-the-clock technical support.

Residential-class service costs $250 for installation and $125 a month and provides data rates up to 256 kb/s upstream and 680 kb/s downstream. Business-class service, which costs $500 for installation and $700 a month, promises rates of 384 kb/s upstream and 1.5 Mb/s downstream.

GTE cited the RADSL features as one reason it chose Westell's products. RADSL lets users take advantage of higher bandwidth when they need it. GTE will offer this option.

Multitenant environments are the fastest way to get ADSL to market because the setups are devoid of competition for copper from incumbent local exchange carriers, according to GTE. GTE also can guarantee the highest ADSL data speeds because short runs of copper are used from the modems to the DSLAMs in the basement of the buildings.

"The whole point is that this market allows us to use the cable inside the building where the service is offered," said Flynn Nogueira, director of data services for GTE.

"The multitenant area is very niche," said John Hunter, broadband analyst at TeleChoice, which forecasts 366,000 DSL lines to be deployed in North America by the end of 1997.

GTE plans to offer service in 16 other states before year's end.

Said Westell President J. Nelson: "One of the catalysts that got ADSL deployed has been competition from cable modem vendors, which have become very aggressive."

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