DSL Forum announces new interoperability plans

The DSL forum yesterday announced a global interoperability testing plan for ADSL, designed to bring DSL to retail outlets much like satellite dishes are sold today.

The plan will create independent testing laboratories where vendors will certify their equipment against both DSL Forum and carrier standards. All equipment passing through the labs will become plug-and-play ready for all carriers certifying with the lab, reducing carriers’ in-house testing expenses and allowing customers to set up DSL service immediately.

Forum president Bill Rodey said the plan will lead to a true retail model for DSL, driving DSL growth worldwide. With 18.7 million subscribers, DSL is already the world’s leading broadband access technology but lags behind cable modems in the U.S. market. Additionally, those nearly 19 million connections account for less than 2% of the world’s local loops. Rodey said the DSL Forum has set a goal of digitizing 20% of the world’s copper lines by 2005, an ambitious goal by anyone’s standards.

“You won’t see any analyst projecting 20% penetration by 2005, but none of them were projecting 18.7 million lines for 2001 either,” Rodey said.

Rodey also announced that the International Telecommunications Union will use the DSL Forum’s interoperability specifications as the basis for its second-generation ADSL standards in North America. The specifications for ADSL2 detail bit-rate and distance requirements well beyond current ADSL standards.