News

DSL Forum Announces Trio of DSLHome Technical Reports (1/7/2004)

New Customer Premises Equipment Specifications Perfect for Value-Added Services and New Capabilities Over Broadband DSL

DSL Forum announces a new suite of Technical Reports (TRs) that further enhance digital subscriber line's (DSL's) interface to a variety of devices that meet the changing needs of the new online home.

-- TR-064 "LAN-Side DSL Customer Premises Equipment (CPE) Configuration Specification" institutes DSLHome(TM) CPE management capabilities that facilitate easier consumer self-installation and a new level of service management from their own location.

-- TR-068 "Base Requirements for an ADSL Modem with Routing" establishes a common set of capabilities that thrive across various service providers' networks. This DSLHome TR sets requirements for high-quality DSL modems and moves these modems towards the retail market, allowing consumers to choose from a larger body of products that can be readily supported by service providers.

-- TR-069 "CPE WAN Management Protocol" introduces secure CPE auto-configuration practices and incorporates other CPE management functions into a common framework. This enables a variety of service offerings including image management, firewall, virus protection, anti-spam, and parental control associated with home network security.

This trio of new TRs is an important milestone, as they will jointly improve operations and enable enhanced DSL services. This advanced CPE functionality complements the IP-based architecture defined in the previously approved TR-059, which supports content delivery services such as games on demand, video on demand, and video conferencing.

SUPERDemo: DSLHome(TM) Exhibit (Booth #20229)

The intelligent home DSLHome(TM) SUPERDemo Roadshow (Booth #20229) is launched this week at SUPERCOMM. This demonstration of a TR-059 based end-to-end DSL network supporting the latest in home networking gateways, exciting family and home office applications, will showcase all that can generate a DSLHome. Focusing on educating attendees about the network potential of the newly evolved IP-centric DSL architecture, and the variety of profitable services that DSL empowers, the roadshow provides a visual tour of the intelligent home, including hands-on demonstrations of video on demand, streaming video, IP telephony, online gaming, and video conferencing. Next stops for this roadshow are Broadband WorldForum-Venice, CES 2005 and CeBIT-Europe.

DSL Forum's President Tom Starr says: "It is exciting to see how the industry is working together to evolve DSL for the future. The DSLHome initiative, launched last year at SUPERCOMM, has already made great strides by addressing architecture enhancements, various device auto-configuration specifications, and now by building a stronger linkage to innovative IP-centric applications that are driving the new intelligent home."

Bringing to the forefront new features that can improve the performance of users' favorite applications, the full suite of DSLHome TRs empower service providers everywhere. By driving capabilities to the customer premises from the access network, scheduled services including home network security, as well as real time content distribution services such as high quality interactive video, will attract and retain DSL customers.

Starr continues, "With DSL's strong market lead, broadband DSL service providers are well positioned globally to not only serve the mass market, but also to provide superior services in a simple and efficient manner. This new DSLHome service flexibility is extending DSL's lead--as the broadband industry begins implementing the new specifications. The future is broadband DSL."

DSL: Strengthening the Global Broadband Lead in Every Region

Global broadband subscribers grew at 12.3% in the first quarter of 2004, adding 12 million to reach a total of 111.5 million, according to the latest data prepared for the DSL Forum by industry analyst, Point Topic. DSL is accelerating that global lead, growing at 14.9% in the quarter - double the rate of other broadband technologies that only achieved 7.2% growth.

Sixty-nine countries now have broadband services, all but eleven of them dominated by DSL. At a global level DSL has a 65.8% share of the broadband access market, with 34.2% held by cable modems, Ethernet and other broadband technologies.

Regionally, only in North America does cable retain the lead in delivering broadband. The USA has the largest total broadband subscriber population in the world at 27.5 million, accounting for almost a quarter of the global market.

Even here, where cable modems have held a dominant market share, they are losing out to broadband DSL that now holds 38.5%, gaining 1.2% in the last quarter alone. In Canada, the fifth largest broadband country in the world at 4.9 million subscribers, cable modems still have the majority of subscribers at 52.83%, but again, DSL is closing the gap.

Over half of the largest 20 countries for broadband are in Europe where the UK, Netherlands and Austria were all dominated by cable modems just nine months ago, but now DSL has the lead. In the European Union by the end of March 2004, over 77% of broadband connections were via DSL.

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