DSL in distress
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But that high-stakes game often ends in aggravation, especially when a corporate customer-who has likely waited weeks and sat through numerous installation visits-reports a problem. Then the finger-pointing starts, as ISP, DSL provider, and local phone company go around and around figuring out who is responsible.
"It was one of the most frustrating experiences of my life," says Ken Riley, CTO of Thinkwell Corp., an electronic textbook publisher in Austin, Texas. Riley claims Thinkwell suffered a major blow last summer when the 50-employee company lost its DSL service, which was used to run e-mail and basic Internet service, for about a week.
Initially lured by its attractive price tag, companies such as Thinkwell are eyeing DSL for a variety of applications. Use of DSL instead of a T1 connection is gaining appeal, especially considering that on average it costs $1,000 per month per line to outfit an operation with T1 high-speed access, while DSL hovers in the $300 to $400 per-month range.
This potential for dramatic savings-along with DSL hype and the fact that it has become more widely available-is prompting even larger enterprises to consider tapping DSL for more than just providing remote workers with high-speed connectivity.
Although it is arguably the most mature and affordable broadband option available, at least for now, DSL continues its mighty struggle to overcome service issues that have plagued the technology since its advent.
Who answers the cry for help?
"For us, it was not a technical problem, but a customer service failure that we simply could not tolerate," says a still-exasperated Riley. "The day our DSL service went out, we ordered a cable connection for backup. Our new cable line was up and running before the DSL was fixed."
Stranded DSL customers' outrage often stems from the complex relationship between the trio of vendors necessarily involved in DSL delivery. To receive operational service, first the local phone company must install a dedicated line or prime an existing phone line to carry the high-speed signal. Then a DSL supplier must deliver customer on-site equipment and turn on service. Only at that point can an ISP kick in Internet service. (All of this tends to hold true even if a corporation looks to a Baby Bell as a primary provider of DSL service, because the phone companies must keep their DSL and ISP operations separate.)
"Service-level agreement [SLA] issues remain very fuzzy. Who is responsible when something goes wrong?" asks Andy Bose, CEO of New York-based research firm AMI Partners. While deep into an analysis of the rise of DSL technology, AMI decided to take the plunge and replace a costly T1 with DSL connectivity. A little more than two months-and several headaches-later, the firm scrapped DSL entirely.
"The local phone company called six distinct times to schedule installation. I kept telling them, 'It's already been scheduled. You've already called. You've already installed it,' " says Eileen Zimbler, AMI's production manager. Zimbler says she got about the same number of calls from the DSL provider and ISP, both uncertain as to where AMI's order stood.
Strange bedfellows
The Baby Bells and DSL powerhouses, such as Covad Communications Co. and Northpoint Communications Group Inc., have long recognized that they are going to have to make more headway on the service front."Service issues are continuing to diminish and service levels are improving," says Liz Fetter, CEO of San Francisco-based Northpoint, about the plethora of nightmare DSL tales. "Some of the early adopter experiences are not what the DSL experience is today."
Northpoint announced last summer that it is pooling resources with Baby Bell Verizon Communications Inc. to go after both business and residential DSL customers. Along with bolstering the two companies' runs at the healthy DSL market, blending the two DSL operations is supposed to remove one step in the often-anguishing DSL installation process.
"It's no blinding insight that we need to eliminate some of the handoffs between companies and establish better service levels," says Fetter, who will head up the combined enterprise, dubbed New Northpoint.
To remedy the service problems, DSL providers such as Northpoint and Covad are working to improve the way they share information about customers and DSL orders with the Bells.
For instance, Covad claims it has put significant effort and resources behind an EDI (electronic data interchange) system to coordinate DSL installations with regional phone companies. The company also has a standing agreement with Baby Bell SBC to deliver service to DSL customers outside SBC territory.
Meanwhile, DSL newcomers, such as regional player ConnectSouth Communications Inc., in Austin, Texas, boast not just interconnection arrangements with the Bells but more "bonded" back-end systems. That is, these vendors' administrative systems interface directly with SBC's systems, so orders and status reports don't have to be faxed or called in.
Still, competitive DSL providers and local phone giants generally make for uneasy partners. "We are both a competitor and a large customer of the Bells," says Jeff Mucci, chairman and CEO of ConnectSouth, a supplier of DSL solutions for small to midsize businesses in the southern region of the United States.
Covad claims that overall it is making progress interacting with the RBOCs (regional Bell operating companies). "Things are slowly getting better," says Eric Moyer, director of product marketing at Santa Clara, Calif.-based Covad. "There have always been some problems, and at times we've had to address those in lawsuits. But we're slowly getting to the point where we can work across their systems."
Although these and other DSL players work to triage the service dilemma, some customers continue to stew, especially those hoping to offer DSL to remote workers of branch offices.
"DSL? As in 'Delayed till Sometime Later?' " quips Jessica Lipnack, co-developer of Boston-based Virtualteams.com, which helps network virtual organizations. Lipnack not only coaches Fortune 500 companies on strategies for virtual workers but also struggles internally with the technology necessary to maximize the use of remote workers.
"What we've got now is a good old-fashioned blue-collar problem standing in front of white-collar knowledge sharing," says Lipnack, assessing the DSL situation.
So who's buying it?
Despite the numerous horror stories, DSL demand is so high that vendors are perhaps just as busy filling orders as they are hustling to head off service snafus. Some market researchers put the DSL sector's growth in 2000 at 120 percent, compared to 1999 growth.
The real action is in huge sets of small to midsize businesses that have never had T1 data lines. "We don't have a T1, which costs a lot more than DSL," Thinkwell's Riley says. "We decided that a combination of DSL and cable gives us a belt and suspenders for good bandwidth at a low price." Thinkwell employs this pair of broadband capabilities for basic e-mail and Internet access.
Riley says that despite the frustration, DSL is also worth a look when scouting backup for T1 or other connections. "But I would absolutely never recommend running a Web business on DSL. That kind of goes without saying," Riley
says. Some larger corporations do seem to be entertaining the notion that DSL is a prime choice in planning backup to T1 lines, and Covad claims it has seen a jump in interest in that area.At the same time, DSL vendors are not hearing from large corporations interested in ripping out existing T1s to save on a monthly bill. Nor are they pushing such scenarios. "If an enterprise manager has already made the call that an application is mission-critical enough for a T1, they are not going to want to replace it with DSL. A T1 is still more reliable," Covad's Moyer says.
Covad and other DSL providers are having even more luck urging enterprises to look at package deals for remote workers, or to consider DSL to wire a branch office into corporate networks.
Novell Inc., for example, is doing just that. The Provo, Utah-based high-tech giant employs remote workers around the globe and is using DSL harnessed to VPNs to allow remote workers to access corporate services.
Novell is also embarking on an aggressive plan to outfit branch sales offices with DSL access, shooting for 30 such setups by the end of the first quarter.
"DSL reliability is pretty good once it's installed," says Robin Gardner, Novell's manager of voice and data services. Gardner says Novell had looked at other broadband options such as cable and fixed wireless technology, which use small satellite dishes to transmit data. But because fixed wireless can be tricky in mountainous areas (line-of-sight technology requires a clear space between a satellite dish and transmitter) and cable posed security issues of which it was leery, the company chose DSL.
Still, to cover its bases, Novell put together a deal with UUNET Technologies Inc.-which acts as a single supplier for DSL, dial, and even mobile connections-that makes use of wireless modems to suit Novell's wide range of needs.
Despite the fact that large companies such as Novell are finding DSL appealing, most DSL vendors agree that the lion's share of DSL business will remain companies that range in size from 20 to 50 employees. Covad and some others claim that DSL appeals even to companies with as many as 100-employees. After that, the technology is booted clearly to secondary-access status. "At about that size, a company generally gets a formal IT manager on board and starts looking at serious investments in an IT infrastructure," Moyer says.
For now DSL is destined to remain an access technology and poses little threat to the still-lucrative T1 and frame-relay markets, agrees AMI's Bose. "DSL is still a technology that is trying to prove itself," he says.
For more enterprise computing news, visit Infoworld.com Copyright © 2000 InfoWorld Media Group, Inc.
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