The
accelerated growth of content-rich applications that demand high bandwidth has
changed the nature of information networks. High-speed communication is now an
ordinary requirement throughout business, government, academic, and "work-at-home"
environments. High-speed Internet access, telecommuting, and remote LAN access
are three services that network access providers clearly must offer. These rapidly
growing applications are placing a new level of demand on the telephone infrastructure,
in particular, the local loop portion of the network (i.e., the local connection
from the subscriber to the local central office). The local loop facility is provisioned
with copper cabling,which cannot easily support high bandwidth transmission. This
environment is now being stressed by the demand for increasingly higher bandwidth
capacities.
Although this infrastructure could be replaced by a massive rollout
of fiber technologies, the cost to do so is prohibitive in today's business models.More
importantly, the time to accomplish such a transition is unacceptable, because
the market demand exists today! This demand for data services has created a significant
market opportunity for providers that are willing and able to invest in technologies
that maximize the copper infrastructure. Both incumbent and competitive Local
Exchange Carriers (ILECs and CLECs) are capitalizing on this opportunity by embracing
such technologies. The mass deployment of high-speed Digital Subscriber Line (DSL)
has changed the playing field for service providers. DSL, which encompasses several
different technologies, essentially allows the extension of megabit bandwidth
capacities from the service provider central office to the customer premises.
Utilizing existing copper cabling, DSL is available at
very reasonable costs
without the need for massive infrastructure replacement. These
new DSL solutions satisfy the business need to provision the network in a fast,
cost-effective manner, while both preserving the infrastructure and allowing a
planned migration into newer technologies.
