Internet access from homes and small offices are the focus of two announcements today in the increasingly competitive and stratified modem market.
Diamond Multimedia Systems announced a new technology that "bonds" two analog phone lines to double the speed of Internet connections, up to 112 Kbps. Diamond will debut the "Shotgun" technology at this month's Comdex in Las Vegas, but products will not be available until early next year. Expected to cost about US$200, the modems require the use of two phone lines, a service for which ISPs are likely charge extra. As an alternative to ISDN, the bonded modem technology is priced competitively, and has the advantage of disconnecting one line for incoming and outgoing voice calls. The Wall Street Journal reports that Hayes Microcomputer and 3Com Corp. also have bonded modems in the works.
In a separate announcement, 3Com today released the OfficeConnect Remote Dual Analog router, which combines two 56 Kbps modems to deliver 112 Kbps connections to networks over analog phone lines. The product is targeted at small-office, remote users who need to access local area network resources - email, workgroup files, and business applications, for example. The OfficeConnect router will be available at the end of November, and will cost $745.
Neither of these new modem offerings, however, are in the same league as upcoming digital subscriber line technologies, which use proprietary hardware and software to increase connection speeds up to 20 times the current 56K bar. Rockwell Semiconductor, Nortel, Hayes, and Alcatel Telecom are among the DSL developers, and Rockwell last week announced a new modem technology based on DSL, which will receive data at speeds of 1 Mbps for home users. The new Rockwell technology is one of several new DSL technologies that is being considered by the International Telecommunications Union, which discussed potential standards at a meeting last week.
The recent spate of new high-speed modem technologies has caused some confusion as to just who is competing with whom, said one observer.
"We're getting a lot of mixed feedback on how these 1-meg modems will complement or conflict with DSL technologies," said John Hunter at TeleChoice, a telecom consultancy based in Verona, New Jersey. "Nortel's card in the switch is intriguing, but I'm not sure if it's going to complement ADSL."
