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The ITU has officially designated the recommended international 56K standard as V.90. This replaces the working title of V.pcm. The ITU has issued a press release. Late Friday, Ken Krechmer updated his report at Communications Standards Review with the latest information, and News.com has a story.
Today marks the completion of the ITU meeting in Geneva which set the preliminary international 56K standard, V.pcm. Ken Krechmer of Communications Standards Review has a summary.
ZDNet UK reports on confusion concerning interoperability of V.pcm modems. Rockwell is maintaining that it will not do interoperability testing with 3Com V.pcm modems. Rockwell claims that its V.pcm modems will connect to 3Com V.pcm modems at a maximum speed of 33.6. Lucent and 3Com have agreed to do interoperability testing.
Ascend announced that it will perform V.pcm compatibility testing with Rockwell.
The Detroit News has a brief story, "Cybersurvey: most will spend more for speed." Unfortunately, once you get beyond the headline you find this comment from one of the respondents:
Richard Lytwyn, San Diego: Before we waste any more money on modems, let the industry first adopt a standard that will make them all compatible with the Internet providers. ... At a $100 plus price tag, this borders on the ridiculous!
Excuse me, but since when is $100 a ludicrous amount of money? There are some ridiculously fast technologies being deployed - particularly cable modems and the DSLs - but companies are going to run head first into consumer price sensitivity.
Cable modems aren't far out of line with traditional modems - around $25 extra per month - but full speed DSL will cost in excess of $100 per month. As much as people like to complain about analog modems (which, to be honest, pretty much suck) and analog modem speeds (ditto), I suspect that the majority of home users aren't ready to put their money where their mouth is.
Firmware updates
Several readers reported new beta Diamond Multimedia firmware, 1.120-05, dated February 2. The standard disclaimer applies: beta software is unfinished software that is believed to contain bugs. If this sounds too risky, wait for the finished version.
O'Grady's PowerPage notes that Global Village has 1.2 firmware for their K56flex PCMCIA cards.
A number of readers have been unhappy with the new Zoom firmware, released a few weeks ago. Those complaints have been echoed on the comp.dcom.modems Usenet newsgroup. If you're happy with your current firmware, I'd recommend skipping the current release.
Dan de Grandpre of Deal-Mac notes that the State of Massachusetts is offering free Internet access to educators through massed.net until September 30. Afterwards, a yearly $25 fee will apply. Massed.net supports x2 connections. Massachusetts educators are also eligible for a special price of $149 on a 3Com U.S. Robotics Sportster. Thanks, Dan!
Luke Jagger notes that Pace has 1.2 K56flex firmware.
John Shinal of Bloomberg News looks at what the upcoming 56K standard means for modem sales and profit margins.
Bonding redux
Eric Wilson of the Sydney Morning Herald has a new piece, "Myths exploded on modem aggregation."
Diamond Multimedia and Earthlink have started trials of Diamond's 112K Shotgun technology. Diamond Multimedia has a press release.
I recently did some work developing ISDN troubleshooting procedures for an Internet help desk. One of the problems addressed was customers who could connect at 64K, but who could not bond the second ISDN channel to get 128K. It turns out that there are a slew of reasons why this can happen, with the result that the committee spent more than half of its time on this one problem. Some of the potential problems are ISDN-specific, but it was an enlightening experience. Bonding multiple analog phone lines will present new challenges for users and technical support departments.
One of the potential problems I mention on the 56K.COM bonding page appears to be fixed. Previously, Ascend dial-in servers had problems with what Ascend calls "stacking," in which one ISDN channel connected to one Ascend chassis, and the second channel connected to a different chassis. The latest Ascend firmware release fixes the problem. Rumor has it that the next major release of Ascend code will support bonding analog phone lines.
Today is the grand opening of the new High Speed ISP listing. The 56K ISP area is open now. Starting next Monday, there will be listings for cable modem ISPs, ISDN ISPs, and DSL ISPs.
Internet service providers can add themselves to the listing by filling out a form at the bottom of each page. There is no cost to be listed. There are also opportunities for low-cost banner advertising on each page.
Modem maker web page moves, continued
On Friday, I praised Practical Peripherals for keeping their old and new sites up simultaneously. That changed this weekend. Sheesh, thanks for making me look bad, guys. :-) Access to www.practinet.com now requires a username and password. The new site at www.practical.com does not require authorization.
As reported last week, Amquest's web site has disappeared. The email I sent to Amquest's tech support email address (which is not based at amquestcorp.com) bounced back this weekend. If anyone has a phone number for Amquest, I'd be interested to know if their phone is still connected.
3Com has kindly offered to help me find new links for pages that disappeared when www.usr.com was taken offline. This weekend I plan on updating all of the links for 3Com and other manufacturers whose servers have moved.
Other news
V.pcm, an international 56K protocol, is expected to be approved in preliminary form at the ITU meeting that concludes this week. Brian McWilliams of PC World News Radio reports that there is confusion over V.pcm interoperability between x2 and K56flex manufacturers. As reported previously, Lucent and 3Com have agreed to do interoperability testing, but there is no agreement between 3Com, which controls the x2 protocol, and Rockwell, the biggest maker of K56flex modems.
In another story, McWilliams reports that US West plans to roll out ADSL in 40 cities in 14 states by this summer.
56K.COM is written and maintained by Les Jones. Artwork by Mark Maxwell.