Sprint's New ION products

Wed Jun 3 18:15:27 UTC 1998

Jeff Burson wrote:
> On Wed, 3 Jun 1998 kbrown at primelink.com wrote:
> > I'm pretty sure I'm not the first to read about this in our local paper,
> > but Sprint announced their new strategy for integrating voice, data, video
> > over "standard phone lines."  They are calling this the Integrated
> > On-Demand Network or ION for short. It sounds an awful lot like ISDN
> > services from perhaps an ESS switch (8 viable bonded channels max) versus
> > the DMS100 (2 bonded channels max).
> 
> An article at wired.com had a little more detail than the marketing hype
> that dominated the Sprint press release.
> 
> The only additional details that emerged were as follows:
> 
> 1. The Sprint backbone that ION relies on will be the ATM network that
> they've been working on.

ATM to the home. What sort of loop, though? Bandwidth concerns?

> 2. For the end user, Sprint is going to be reselling various LECs'
> ADSL offerings and then charging an extra $200 to install a metering
> device at the end user's location. 

The Chicago Tribune says you'll be able to buy it at Radio Shack :-)
(Which means it'll be $350, but that's another story in itself).

> It's not apparent as to whether ION for both the business user and the
> home user will rely on a LEC's ADSL (a scary thought).

Doubtful. It says it relies on the ATM network that Sprint's been building.
There's supposedly a test rollout by 1999 in the major markets to small
business and home-based businesses.. which, as we all know, means they
probably havent even begun to think about how to do it. :-)

> Following the ION announcement has been singularly frustrating due to the
> absence of any technical content in their announcements.

"Up to 100 times faster than conventional modems" is said in their
press release.  Taking a conventional stable modem to be 28.8, that puts
the connection at 360 Kbytes/sec, or ~1.8 DS1 (2.88 Mbit).  If a 56k
were used as reference, that puts the connection at 5.7 Mbit, still DSL
speed..

I wonder what kind of site equipment you need to support this, and what
limitations will be placed on that.  This is leading in the com-priv
sort of way, but next issues: Obtaining telephone numbers? Local tarriffs?
What defines "long distance"?  Can you make a call or fax to some
IP address (or equivalent) to another ION user, bypassing transition to
the analog (LEC/Telco) network, and have reduced tarriffs?

Perhaps this $200 unit is the NT1-equivalent.  If so, it's damn cheap.
If not, why isnt billing built into the customer-end equipment?

I'll stop asking questions before people think Jim Fleming took over
my email account. :-p

FWIW, there is a dumb playback of the announcement at 888-590-5970..
http://www.sprint.com/sprint/press/releases/9806/9806010583.html
It doesnt tell a whole lot (still listening to it), but whatever.
If anyone knows how to get an AT&T 8520T to pipe into the line-in on
an Ultra, I'll make an MP3.. :-)

-- 
jamie rishaw (dal/efnet:gavroche)           American Information Systems, Inc.
     rdm: "Religion is obsolete."   gsr: "By what?"  jgr: "Solaris." (1996)
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