Sprint's New ION products

Wed Jun 3 21:11:56 UTC 1998

>"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've heard VDSL/ADSL.  They will have to go over existing copper and the
only choices are xDSL technologies.  Check out www.adsl.com for more
information on what is going on.  Ameritech is hoping to have 70% of its
customer base covered with ADSL by 2000.  I'm sure these decisions are not
made without inter-corporate communications.

>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?

That is going to be the problem, there will be no "long distance" and thus
no tarriffs and thus FCC/WDC and other regulatory garbage will come and
stomp it out.  It will be based on bandwidth alone.  For more information
take a look at Cisco's NetFlow
(http://www.cisco.com/warp/public/732/netflow/index.html)

>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?

A $200 ADSL modem sounds about right and the billing will most likely be in
the router/switch you are connected to, not prem-based.

Just some random thoughts,
Brad