ISDN gets a new style, Can the technology shake its old image in favor of a new user-friendly attitude?

If ISDN were a movie star, it would have appeared on Blackwell's best- and worst-dressed list. At various points over its 20-year history, ISDN has been hailed as a great achievement, capable of carrying voice, video and data over a single connection. It has also been derided as a huge flop, virtually impossible to install or understand.

How does it currently rate? Driven to a large extent by remote access applications (Figure 1), the installed base continues to grow substantially (Figure 2).

The past year has brought a number of positive developments for the technology. Industry groups have agreed on several key standards that should make ISDN easier to use, and ISDN equipment prices have dropped. Overshadowing these advances, however, are new access technologies-including asymmetrical digital subscriber line (ADSL), cable modems and 56 kb/s modems.

A more casual approach The future of ISDN depends on the ability to ease the ordering and equipment installation process for the customer, says Kitty Weldon, senior analyst at The Yankee Group, Boston. Some customers will not use analog modems to access the Internet because they demand more bandwidth, she says, adding that it's not too late for ISDN to become a user-friendly service.

To simplify the ISDN deployment process, the North American ISDN Users Forum-a National Institute of Standards and Technology group-and the National ISDN Council have developed a format for a generic service profile identifier (SPID).

A SPID number, similar to a telephone number, needs to be entered into ISDN customer premises equipment. Traditionally, each manufacturer's central office switch has interpreted SPID information differently-which means customers have had to identify the type of switch that they were connecting to.

The NIC and NIUF formed a task force to simplify the process of configuring CPE. CO switch manufacturers Ericsson, Lucent Technologies, Northern Telecom and Siemens worked with the task force to devise the generic SPID format, which will be common to all switches. Most telcos are expected to have implemented the generic SPID format by the end of the year.

Generic SPIDs will make it easier for users to establish ISDN service, says Garrett Jenkins, ISDN industry liaison for BellSouth and NIC chairman. Customers can simply look at their equipment instruction manual for complete SPID information. They will no longer need to know their CO switch type. And large customers, value-added resellers and equipment vendors in multiple locations can use the same procedure for each location, Jenkins said.

The generic SPID should also make ISDN more attractive to Internet service providers. Until now, the inconsistency among CO switch manufacturers has made it difficult for carriers and ISPs to offer access software to their customers, says Jeffrey Fritz, a telecommunications engineer at West Virginia University. Incorporating generic SPID support into access software should help ISPs simplify their ISDN interface.

GTE completed its generic SPID implementation in September, notes Christine Christian, GTE's ISDN program manager.

"The changes were [mostly] internal from a communications standpoint, including entry-order people, facilities assignments and updating databases," says Christian. "Everyone who has worked with SPIDs has welcomed the generic format. I would love to see the day when we don't have to use the term SPID at all. Moving forward, our customers will not have to deal with the hassle of SPIDs.

The generic SPID is only the first of three steps that have been recommended by the SPID Task Force to simplify the user's interface with the switch.

An ongoing plan addresses another ISDN pitfall. Currently, different switch manufacturers have different methods of implementation of enhanced calling features-with each manufacturer requiring a different key or a series of keys to be pressed to access a specific feature. The task force has recommended a solution that would assign fixed feature identifier values to feature keys.

In the long term, SPID selection will be automatic. The switch will send the SPID to the terminal device, eliminating the need for the user to manually enter the SPID.

Pacific Bell is already offering an ISDN Internet access package, dubbed Home Pack, that has automatic SPID support. The company partnered with 3Com to develop the offering, which was formally introduced at Comdex earlier this month. The package includes Web browser software for Pacific Bell Internet access.

Ending mismatches The NIUF is also working with carriers to develop a single form for ordering ISDN service.

"Traditionally, the ordering process has been ISDN's stumbling block," says Kieran Taylor, broadband consultant at TeleChoice, Verona, N.J. Carriers and ISDN equipment vendors need to simplify the ordering process and get that message to the market before ADSL and cable modems gain wide acceptance, he says.

Currently, every interexchange carrier, local exchange carrier and anyone else offering basic rate ISDN service uses a different order form.

AT&T, which frequently orders basic rate lines from other carriers, recognized the need for a common and more simplified form, so it developed one. The form was presented to the NIUF for consideration about a year and a half ago, says Dick Slezak, AT&T's managing director of global ISDN. The NIUF is working to make AT&T's form acceptable for all carriers.

"We put as many basic rate ISDN lines onto our network register in the last eight months as we did in the previous five years. A standard template makes sense," Slezak says.

GTE plans to adopt the NIUF's simplified order form, says Christian. "The latest revision from the NIUF looks pretty clean," she says.

GTE believes it will be able to implement the unified order form by the end of the year. A single form will be a key advantage to GTE because it deals with so many states and carriers, Christian says, adding that the new form will enable the company to offer better service to its customers and shorten the time between service ordering and deployment.

"The ordering codes for equipment manufacturers is a much bigger hurdle," Christian says.

ISDN CPE does not offer users standardized plug-and-play features, she says. To address this need, the NIUF has developed the EZ-ISDN series of codes that specify how a line should be provisioned for use with various end user devices (see sidebar).

New contenders ISDN has some focused competition creeping up on it. ADSL and cable modems have been this year's access buzz words, but service availability for these technologies is extremely limited and is mainly in the testing phase.

Each technology offers advantages to users-although ISDN's main advantage now is that it is widely available and that many of its kinks have already been worked out.

Like ISDN, ADSL uses twisted pair copper telephone cable. The main advantage of ADSL, however, is that it provides substantially more bandwidth than basic rate ISDN. Compared with the 128 kb/s maximum bandwidth of a basic rate ISDN line, ADSL offers up to 1.5 Mb/s downstream plus POTS in current versions-and up to 8 Mb/s downstream plus POTS in versions currently under trial. And unlike ISDN, ADSL customers will not lose service in a power outage, says Jeff Waldhuter, executive director of research and development for Nynex.

On the other hand, ISDN allows customers to contact multiple sites and users, while ADSL is only being talked about as a dedicated connection to one site such as the Internet, he says.

"ADSL will be rolled out on an application-by-application basis," Waldhuter says.

TeleChoice's Taylor believes ADSL will not be plagued by as many problems as ISDN has experienced. "ISDN is a protocol, and ADSL is just a physical layer," he says.

ADSL will not have the same protocol issues that ISDN did, especially when the latter was initially deployed, Taylor says, adding that ADSL will be easier to order and users will not have to worry about issues such as SPIDs or signaling protocols.

"ADSL and cable modem vendors will learn from the mistakes of ISDN-marketing the technology instead of the service [for example]," Taylor says.

With easier ordering and simplified service support, ISDN is in a position to change its image. But ISDN's proponents are likely to have an uphill battle getting it onto the best-dressed list this year.

"ISDN's bad reputation will linger, but focused marketing will dispel some of that," says Taylor. "It will take some intelligent spin doctors to reverse conventional wisdom." Denise Pappalardo was East Coast Bureau Chief at the time this story was written.

The good news from last week's Comdex show in Las Vegas was that a record crowd showed up. The bad news may have been that most of this record crowd was stuck in traffic or waiting for cabs much of the time, and didn't get to see a lot of the actual show.

Actually, the public network residents of the telecommunications industry may have plenty to cheer about after this anomalous event. Demonstrations of ADSL and ISDN were prevalent and popular, and users were asking the questions that serious buyers ask: When will I be able to get it? How much will I have to pay? This will help the ISDN market continue to grow and provide carriers with enough information about ADSL to help them avoid the marketing problems that haunted ISDN for so long.

Still, just when things are starting to look bright for these digital transmission technologies, analog keeps rearing its ugly head.

U.S. Robotics and Brooktree/Rockwell led the huge camp of vendors that were talking about 56 kb/s analog modems at the show. Twice as speedy as the most popular modems of late (28.8 kb/s), these solutions would seem to offer something that's just fast enough for most users' current Internet access applications-but with none of ISDN's confusion or historically bad pricing.

Sure, ISDN may offer a lot of capacity (128 kb/s), but some users don't need that much speed right now to be happy, just as some may not need all of ADSL's prowess for another year or two.

There certainly is some level of excitement surrounding 56 kb/s. Many Comdex attendees got their first look at the technology last week, but it was predicted to be the star of the show months ago.

However, as its powers were unveiled, so were some of its problems. For instance, U.S. Robotics and Brooktree/Rockwell have developed competing de facto standards that have split the modem manufacturing camp-remind anyone of ADSL?

Also, the new modems may not get much support from the largest telcos, which have digitized all but the most remote corners of their networks. And their emergence may force small Internet service providers to make new investments at a time when they are trying to control costs.

This is not to say that 56 kb/s won't have a life. In this particular window of time, it may serve as the latest interim solution for our transitory world, keeping users happy until they need the versatility of digital products.

Well, gradual progress is still progress, if nothing else.