Applications Must Drive Dsl Demand, Says Nec
The Age
Tuesday October 2, 2001
INTERACTIVE entertainment, rather than the promise of high-speed Web access, will drive the spread of digital subscriber line (DSL) broadband services, according to NEC Australia.
Applications such as interactive TV, pay TV and video on demand - along with Internet telephony and videoconferencing - will drive the roll out of consumer DSL, says NEC Australia's networks general manager John Del Papa.
DSL technology delivers high-speed data access over standard copper telephone lines while still allowing voice calls. DSL is available in several varieties and, in Australia, asymmetric DSL (ADSL) offers download speeds of up to 1.5 megabits a second with slower upload speeds of up to 256 kilobits a second.
``We saw back in the mid-'90s that ADSL was great for video but it went through that phase and everyone changed their mind and said high-speed Internet was the reason why people would want to deploy DSL," Del Papa says.
NEC's global DSL research and development is based at its technology centre in Mulgrave, one of the company's three global design centres for excellence.
A team of more than 100 designers is engaged in developing broadband hardware, software and network management solutions. Manufacturing is done outside Australia but the centre does produce prototypes.
NEC Australia has exported more than $90 million of locally developed ADSL products and technologies to Asia in the past two years providing more than one million ADSL lines.
Australian DSL network operators need to realise delivering Web access alone will not drive consumer demand, says Del Papa. Hong Kong DSL providers, to which NEC Australia has exported 200,000 connections worth of ADSL technology, took the reverse approach.
``Gaming at home over ADSL was the very first service they launched. The other services they were deploying in Hong Kong were interactive TV, which provided video on demand and shopping and all these sorts of services," he says.
``After that they wanted to increase their subscriber base and to do that they needed more services so they added Internet access."
Asian carriers deploying NEC Australia's DSL technology focused on the consumer market before turning their attention to small to medium enterprises - again the reverse of the Australian experience.
NEC Australia was closely involved with Telstra's early forays into ADSL research and the two companies ran pay TV and video on demand trials in 300 homes in Victoria and 200 in Wollongong in the mid-'90s.
Telstra ended ADSL trials with NEC and turned its back on the supplier as it began rolling out its hybrid fibre coaxial cable network to provide such services, leading NEC Australia to focus on the export market.
NEC Australia is now taking on Telstra in the Australian DSL market through its NEXTEP broadband joint venture with high-speed Internet provider xDSL.
Last year, NEXTEP began rolling out a nationwide DSL network that is scheduled to reach 240 exchanges by March 2003, giving it 70 per cent residential and small-to-medium enterprise (SME) coverage.
Pay TV, video on demand, Internet telephony and videoconferencing trials have been completed at the Mulgrave centre in preparation for roll out by NEXTEP.
In telephone exchanges across the country, NEXTEP is deploying AM30 DSL access multiplexers (DSLAMs) designed by NEC Australia.
Along with ADSL, the DSLAMs support symmetric high-speed DSL (SHDSL), which offers up to 2.3 megabits a second both up and down stream, and very high-speed DSL, which offers up to 55 megabits a second both ways but only at close range.
NEXTEP began rolling out SHDSL in Australia in August and last week NEC Australia began commercial SHDSL exports to Asia with a $120,000 shipment to a Hong Kong carrier.
``SHDSL technology provides a cost-effective alternative to technologies such as fibre, enabling service providers to deliver more competitive IP, data and telephony solutions," Del Papa says.
``The addition of SHDSL to our platform means that service providers can now deliver cost-effective services such as virtual private networks and videoconferencing to small and medium sized businesses and home users."
© 2001 The Age