DSL Forum forges on

ATLANTA--The ever-positive DSL Forum announced this week at Supercomm that despite the troubles that have plagued the industry, DSL is going strong and will be a critical technology in the broadband space.

“It’s clear that DSL is exploding in the marketplace—and I mean that in a good way,” said Bill Rodey, senior voice president of marketing and engineering with HyperEdge and chairman and president of the DSL Forum. 

“There is a large and growing market for DSL,” Rodey said. TeleChoice research indicates that DSL grew 382% in 2000 and the installed base is doubling every six months. By 2004, the global market for residential DSL will be $64 million and the technology will reach about 70% of households, he added. 

However, Rodey admitted that DSL in the near term will lag behind cable modem service, deployments of which have steadily moved ahead. Not only are cable companies unencumbered by regulatory issues, but the service reaches more residential users than DSL today. 

The latter will change, predicts Tom Starr, a senior member of technical staff for SBC Technology Resources and a vice chairman of the DSL Forum. Companies are developing products that extend the reach of DSL beyond the 12,000- to 18,000-foot limitations. 

“The three-mile barrier--we’re blasting a hole in that,” Starr said. “DSL services can be provided to people who are very far away from the central office.” 

The forum is promoting several efforts to do so, including the DSL Anywhere initiative. The latter encourages multivendor cooperation to develop mass market DSL solutions, addresses digital loop carrier problems and provides a toolkit that allows carriers to offer the service at greater distances. 

Specifically, the organization is focusing on more accurate loop qualification tools, DLC solutions such as gateways to extend the reach, remote access multiplexers for overlay solutions, repeaters and loop extenders. In addition, the forum is looking at emerging standards such as single-pair, high-speed DSL (SHDSL). 

SBC is moving forward with Project Pronto, the $6 billion initiative, and on average can turn up customers in 10 days, Starr said. By the end of the year, the company expects to have DSL available to 25.6 million business and residential users. 

More than 300 companies are members of the DSL Forum, which promotes application development and deployment of DSL service. It does not establish standards, but the forum provides guidelines and recommendations to standards bodies.
Susan Biagi is editor in chief of Telephony. She can be reached at sbiagi@intertec.com.