Cable Modems In Doubt
The Age
Tuesday March 26, 1996
Computer Age encountered a cable modem-free zone at Hannover, raising questions about the future of the devices that are set to revolutionise online services. Will the European preference for ISDN affect the availability of cable modems here? Ben Potter surveyed CeBIT 96, looking for answers.
THE massive hype over cable modems in Australia and the United States is not matched in Europe.
The vast annual CeBIT information technology and communications fair in Hannover was almost a cable modem-free zone. Instead, Internet access through the high band-width ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network) was one of the dominant themes of the fair.
Despite good local reasons for an emphasis on ISDN - mainly, the wide availability of the service in Germany and other West European nations - the absence of working cable modems at CeBIT was puzzling.
It raised several questions about how quickly the super- fast modems that are supposed to revolutionise online services with real-time interactive graphical and video communications will be available to the mass market.
Will US manufacturers such as Motorola, Hewlett-Packard and ADC (which is backing Netcomm Australia in its efforts to produce cable modems for Australia and the region) really be able to produce cable modems in big volumes, reliably, later this year as promised?
If the Internet remains the dominant information network, will users get any benefit out of cable modems operating at 10Mbits/sec or faster when the backbone and architecture of the Internet itself often cannot support more than 10 to 20 Kbit/sec?
Will ISDN, long the poor cousin in Australia, experience a renaissance when Telstra belatedly completes its $300 million project of building ISDN into its digital phone network mid- year and, as expected, drops its prices sharply?
So, is the Eurocentricity of CeBIT a factor in the lack of cable modems on display? After trawling through every likely stand in the huge 26-hall fairground outside Hanover, Computer Age was only able to unearth two cable modems.
Siemens had a 4Bit/sec Zenith cable modem, but a representative, Michael Ribeiro, said they were only being made available to business users on request.
Ribeiro speculated that Deutsche Telekom, the largest cable operator in Germany, might not be interested in cable modems for consumers until the technology was stabilised and standards were available.
Intel showed its 10Mb/Sec Cable Port Adaptor, which was to have been used in field trials later this year, including for Telstra in Australia, according to Intel Europe's content project manager, Edmund Preiss.
Preiss said the 10Mb/Sec modem would not be commercially released, but its successor, a 30Mb model, would be tested next year.
He also said Germany was not ready for cable modems because Deutsche Telekom's cable system had no back channel, although it might be possible to use the telephone line. However, Intel's commitment to the cable modem market is unclear, following reports from Australia and the US that it has abandoned the market to its more specialised competitors.
Among other companies touting cable modems, ADC and Netcomm didn't exhibit at the fair, and Motorola and Hewlett-Packard did not demonstrate them.
A European Motorola executive, Rudy Gennar, said his company did not have the resources in Europe to demonstrate cable modems, but would deliver its first cable modems in the US later this month and hoped to get trial quantities to Europe by mid year.
Motorola has agreed to supply the US cable giant Tele-Communications, but supplies are not expected until the fourth quarter.
Nortel Dasa, a joint venture between Nortel and Daimler- Benz Aerospace had its Fibreworld broadband network management network system on show - minus the cable modem. A Nortel Dasa engineer, Helmut Oehl, said the high-speed data cable modem would not be available until next year. He was sceptical about claims that cable modems could be in service commercially as early as the middle of this year and predicted it would be mid-1997 or later before they were available in volume for the mass market.
Bob Easson, strategic development manager for Telstra Multimedia, said: ``My observation here is that cable modems are something for the future. The key issues at this conference are ISDN and Internet . . . What we are seeing in Europe, and I'm sure we'll see in Australia, is a renaissance of ISDN." In Germany, ISDN is almost universal and getting cheaper.
As well, cable is not as widespread as in the US and Deutsche Telekom has had to slow cable investment to concentrate on upgrading the decrepit telephone network bequeathed to it by the former East Germany. So there is less incentive to push into cable modems.
In Australia, Telstra and Optus Vision are frantically rolling out cable networks capable of supporting two-way cable modems services and Netcomm Australia hopes to share this market through its supply deal with ADC for Optus Vision.
But at least two big modem makers are banking on cable modems being slower to take hold than promised and on new technology lifting the performance of ISDN, so that ISDN will have a significant market in Australia, notwithstanding the cable push.
Hayes Microcomputers' manager for Australasia, Andrew Phillips, said an imminent international standard on bundling of ISDN channels would lift the present maximum data speed of Kbits per channel to 128, while four-to-one compression would lift this to more than 500 bits.
The Hewlett-Packard engineer also said research was being done in Europe aimed at lifting the speed of ISDN to 600 Kbits or more.
Phillips said Hayes would launch an ISDN modem by the end of the year in Australia.
Banksia Technology, the second biggest modem supplier in Australia after Netcomm, is also staying aloof from the cable modem market. Some would attribute this to its not having a supply deal, but a Banksia representative on the company's stand at CeBIT said cable modems were likely to take longer than promised to be commercially available in large volumes.
By contrast, he expected ISDN to be competitive once Telstra dropped its rates mid-year.
Telstra's director of research, Dr Hugh Bradlow, said there was potential for disappointment among cable modem users when they found that despite the high speed of their connection, the Internet could only support consistent speeds of 10-20Kbits/sec.
Bradlow agreed that the focus at CeBIT had been on ISDN, but said the competitive market was driven out of the US and he still expected cable modems to be a big issue there later this year.
The use of cable modems would in turn drive demand for improvements in the Internet itself, he said. Meantime, carriers would probably have to offer a range of services - including cable modems and ISDN modems - with varying degrees of reliability and quality.
© 1996 The Age
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