Copper Mountain yesterday announced business relations with Lucent and 3Com that will expand use of Copper Mountain digital subscriber line (DSL) gear.
Lucent will co-brand and market Copper Mountain's CopperEdge DSL access concentrator for switching offices, CopperRocket DSL modems for end users and CopperView Element Management System for managing the gear.
Many service providers do not want to hire a full-time staff just to install DSL lines, so Lucent will provide this service for them. DSL is an access technology suitable for Internet access or corporate access, supporting a dedicated broadband connection over a regular phone line.
Lucent will use Copper Mountain modems that support symmetric DSL up to 1.5M bit/sec and ISDN DSL up to 144K bit/sec. SDSL can serve customers with lines that run directly into phone company switching offices, and IDSL can serve those with lines that meet the carrier network at a remote switching office extension.
Using the same customer modem, the speed of the service supplied to the customer can be changed remotely by the service provider via a software download.
DSL service provider NorthPoint already uses the Lucent service that sets up DSL service.
As par of its deal with 3Com, Copper Mountain will supply its SDSL technology for customer modems that will be compatible with Copper Mountain service provider modems. 3Com plans to make customer modems that are compatible with service provider modems made by many vendors. The intent, according to 3Com, is to have enough interoperability with service provider equipment so customers can buy modems off the shelf without worrying whether they will work with their particular service provider's network.
RELATED LINKS
Copper Mountain testing interoperability of DSL equipment
Network World, 5/21/98
Copper Mountain gear tuned for IDSL
Network World, 08/17/98
DSL Net Resource: primers and more
Network World Fusion
