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And Then There Was One: 56K Modem Standard Is Coming

The ITU should have a unified standard for 56-kbps modems by January.

By Brian McWilliams, PCWorld   

Les Brown, chairman of an International Telecommunication Union committee that is working on a standard, said the marketplace is driving the so-called expert group to expedite the 56K standard. %dquotThere%squots more pressure for us in the standards forum to complete the work,%dquot said Brown. %dquotOtherwise, proprietary solutions will flourish, and it%squots going to be intolerable having two proprietary systems out there that don%squott talk to each other.%dquot

Brown was referring, of course, to the two reigning de facto standards: the K56flex protocol developed by Rockwell and Lucent, and the x2 specification from U.S. Robotics. Most modem makers have jumped into one camp or the other, with a couple of vendors offering both x2 and K56flex products.

Neither implementation of 56K can communicate with the other, which is why a single international standard is so important. But some analysts wonder whether the ITU%squots aggressive schedule is realistic, especially given that it took four years to develop the current V.34 standard for 28.8-kbps modems.

%dquotI%squotm a little skeptical that you can pull together these political factions that quickly,%dquot said Kieran Taylor, an analyst with the market research firm Telechoice. %dquotI think the K56flex group is pretty much in line; they%squotll probably vote as a block. But U.S. Robotics has some different takes on the implementation of 56K, and so it might take some time for [each company] to convince others to come onto its side.%dquot

Brown, who is also a manager at Motorola, acknowledges that politics are likely to play a larger role than technical issues in the ITU%squots discussions. But he said that modem vendors are eager to tap into the pent-up demand from PC users for reliable dial-up 56-kbps connections.

%dquotConsumers just want to go to the store, buy a modem, and have it work wherever,%dquot Brown noted. %dquotThey want to travel, move, whatever, without being stuck with any particular Internet service provider. The leased-line environment--who cares? You have both ends from a given manufacturer, but the dial-up environment is more open-ended.%dquot

Brown also said that more than 40 experts from six countries, including representatives from the major modem and communications-technology suppliers, will have a draft document ready for the ITU%squots meeting in September. From that point, the draft will be translated into several languages and circulated to various nations for review. If all goes well, the study group will be granted permission to approve the new international standard at its next meeting, scheduled for January 1998.