ISDN still fighting at Comdex

At Comdex Fall '94, ISDN enjoyed a resurgence from an embattled past of poor deployment and marketing. This week, at Comdex Fall '96, ISDN is still fighting, despite being battered from every side by cable modems, digital subscriber line and 56 kb/s modem technology.

Among a variety of ISDN developments at the show, Dialogic will demonstrate its new Gammalink ISDN Cpi/200 computer-based fax board, which provides a basic rate ISDN interface for business users' fax servers. One board can establish two fax channels on a single basic rate ISDN link, and a chassis can include up to 16 boards.

The development will help carriers encourage users to move more analog traffic to ISDN, thereby increasing the value of ISDN connections and making them an easier sell, said John Taylor, general manager at Dialogic's Gammalink division. The solution also addresses growing international ISDN and fax server markets, he said.

"The fax server market is reaching critical mass, and ISDN is well understood overseas," said Taylor. Indeed, in some countries where analog lines are hard to come by, some carriers have actually started offering incentives to buy ISDN instead.

The Gammalink fax board will be available in December.

Although it appears that ISDN may continue its quiet progression, the real news at Comdex may be a handful of 56 kb/s analog modem demonstrations. Though still in the prototype phase, the technology has been hyped for months as a more realistic alternative for Internet users than ISDN and other high-speed technologies. Carriers may be wise to watch Comdex to gain a measure of user interest.

"The hype is almost too heavy right now," said one Bell company source who declined to be identified. "You can't yet say that these new modems will put people off of other access methods. We don't even know what kind of investment there will be for a budding Internet operation.