THE LAST MILE - CABLE OR TELEPHONE?

August 28, 1996

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The billion dollar question in the cable and telephone industries is how to travel the last mile towards high speed digital access to the home. Will it be through Cable Modems? Maybe not. Intel's recent trial in a Silicon Valley town has been, according to Andy Grove, "awfully difficult to implement." Instead, he suggests that ADSL (Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line) or its variations, loosely called XDSL (where X=Symmetric or Very high bit rate), may be the answer.

The telephone companies think so, particularly because they can use existing phone lines to deliver T1 rates (1.5 Mbps) & above, to the home. Two Baby Bells in the U.S. announced trials: GTE is planning a trial in Redmond, Washington [you guessed it, Microsoft is involved]; Pacific Bell is playing it safe - it has cable modem trials in San Jose and ADSL trials near Oakland, California.

In Canada, the government just relaxed rules that forbade phone companies getting into the cable access business (and vice versa). This means we should start to see some action on ADSL (the cable companies are already trying out cable modems). Meanwhile, UUNET Canada will be running a trial to provide Internet access through ADSL using modems made by Westell Inc. of Tampa, Florida.