Subject: [USR-TC] PRESS CLIPPING: CommWorks V.92/InternetNews.com

From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 03 Jul 2002 19:35:27 +0000

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InternetNews.com
CommWorks Pins V.92 Hopes On ISPs
By Michael Singer
July 2, 2002
www.internetnews.com/isp-news/article.php/1380241

Although broadband technologies (DSL and Cable) are all the rage right now,
in reality, most people around the world only have access to analog phone
lines.

Because of that, Santa Clara, Calif.-based 3Com (COMS: Quote, Company Info)
subsidiary CommWorks said Monday that it is supplying some regional ISPs
with its V.92 technology.

V.92 is the latest dial-up modem specification from the International
Telecommunications Union (ITU). The standard transmits at the same speed as
V.90 but offers a reduced handshake time and an on-hold feature.

Currently, the only national service provider to have announced plans for
V.92 support is Level 3. Most service provider support for the new modem
standard has come from regional ISPs, which is why CommWorks is targeting
the little guys. Some 300 ISPs have signed up to date.

Connecticut-based Cybershore, Utah's InfoWest Global Internet Services and
RipNET, an emerging ISP in Ontario are among the early adopters of
CommWorks' V.92 products.

"Broadband technologies have received much attention in recent years, but
the reality is that most people around the world use dial-up modems to
access the Internet," said CommWorks director of wireline product
management Patrick Henkle. "According to industry forecasts, market
expansion will continue in the traditional dial access market as
applications such as e-commerce, telecommuting and mobile computing
continue to drive demand. The features enabled by V.92 make dial access an
attractive and viable connectivity option for many users."

That forecast from In-Stat/MDR, entitled V.92 - Broadening Narrowband ,
estimates that in 2001 close to 11 percent of all US consumer analog modems
shipped were V.92. This will grow to close to 44 percent in the year 2003
and nearly 100 percent by the year 2004. Furthermore, dial-up access will
remain the primary access technology in the US home through 2006.

Features of V.92 include Quick Connect, which shortens the time it takes to
connect to the Internet. Modem-on-hold allows users to accept an incoming
phone call during an Internet session without losing the dial-up
connection. Pulse Code Modulation (PCM) Upstream increases the speed at
which users can send information, such as file transfers and e-mail
attachments, to a network.

Rolling Meadows, Ill.-based CommWorks said its Total Control 1000
multiservice access platform supports all three V.92 features, as well as
V.44, the latest standard for compressing data. V.44 boosts throughput
speed by 20-60 percent, providing users with a significant improvement in
upstream and downstream performance, such as faster download of HTML pages.

For the vast majority of current CommWorks customers using the Total
Control 1000 platform, the move to V.92/V.44 can be done through a software
upgrade to their current modem cards.

With both the amount of modems being shipped, and the percent of homes
using dial-up, service providers won't be able to hold off on their V.92
plans for long.

CommWorks is hoping its early investment in the new technology will pay off
in the short term and the long run.

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 03 Jul 2002 20:04:16 +0000

When will 3Com release a version of the code that actually
works?   We are one of those regional ISPs that spent ten
of thousands to upgrade to the new ARCs (not Hipers) and
Multispan cards only to find that the V.92 code trashed
almost all Winmodem connections and even failed to
negotiate at all with 3Com's own hardware based modems!

>On Wed, 3 Jul 2002 14:36:31 -0500
>
> [email-masked] wrote:
>