Hey, at least DSL is here, somewhere ...

With regional Bell operating companies starting their tentative digital subscriber line (DSL) deployments, you may have noticed an abundance of war stories in online DSL forums. While it's easy to get caught up in the bashing, the war stories confirm that delivering mass-market, high-tech services is still not an easy task for telcos.

Last year, DSL was praised ad nauseam for how it would change the world. This year, with deployments started, we are seeing more "DSL Hurdle" stories, which, incidentally, describe the same hurdles that have been discussed since DSL's inception. Every golden child technology has its day in the sun, and then it gets ripped to shreds. Then it comes back again. The wave of DSL deployment stories - while not as supportive of the technology as before - at least confirm that deployment is starting.

You might consider the number of complaints as a twisted litmus test of an organization's sincerity and commitment to implementing high-speed DSL access.

Given the press community's penchant for juicy stories, we expect to see more deployment horror articles in the coming months.

Even though service deployment is often painful for both the service provider and the customer, these are the consequences of a new service. Every telco will have a significant learning curve for DSL, but don't think they won't learn their lessons. Telcos are still stinging from ISDN and are determined that the deployment of DSL will be different. It's still too early to tell if they'll achieve that goal.

From the stories we've seen so far, loop qualification and customer installation are two areas where we would expect to see some better services offered over the next couple of quarters.

As real-life information is gained about loop lengths, plant conditions and customer installations, the next generation of DSL access multiplexers (DSLAM), customer premises equipment and testing gear will ensure that next year's customers fare better than current early adopters.

Mind you, none of this is an excuse for poor service or clumsy installation. The telcos need to be better here - they need to be prepared for taking orders and installing customers prior to launching the service.

From what we've seen and experienced - our firm has installed both DSL and cable modems on our internal network in more than 10 states - DSL service delivery processes are not ready for mass markets yet. There aren't sufficient ways to keep customers from falling through the cracks, which leads to, well, more horror stories.

On the other hand, we can't wait for a perfect service launch. Those who wait for all the i's to be dotted and t's to be crossed will miss the DSL boat.

Getting to the customer first is the name of the game for the next 12 months. The trick seems to be in gaining high-speed DSL customers without inflicting grossly negligent and painful service delivery processes on those users at the same time.

Daniel Briere is president and Christine Heckart is vice president of TeleChoice, a consultancy in Boston. They can be reached at dbriere@t elechoice.com and checkart@ telechoice.com.