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New modem will speed up Internet access

company October 4, 1996
Web posted at: 6:20 p.m. EDT

ATLANTA (CNN) -- Home Internet users frustrated with the slow speed on the information superhighway may be in luck. A new type of modem technology is turbocharging access to the Internet and World Wide Web by using an ordinary phone line.

The modem created by Alcatel Telecom, a French-owned company, can download information at 4 million bits per second, more than 100 times faster than the current 28,000 bits-per-second standard for home computer modems. The company says its equipment is also significantly faster than other new types of lines like ISDN and much-hyped cable TV modems.

modem

The cost of the modem service to users could be as low as $50 per month, including a regular phone line, Alcatel says.

Alcatel's modem is the size of a CD player and uses two types of technology: Asymmetrical Digital Subscriber Line, ADSL, and Asychronous Transfer Mode, ATM, which together divide copper phone lines in two, providing a path for on-line connections while retaining room for simple phone calls.

server

The split also ends one of the top complaints of on-line users -- slow access to the Web and Internet -- by opening lanes and tremendously increasing surfing speed. Downloading pictures can be done in seconds, and video and film clips, which are notoriously time-consuming to download, can be accessed in minutes, Alcatel officials say.

Alcatel says regional phone companies are jumping at the opportunity. It requires a file cabinet-sized box of switching equipment and servers installed at each phone company. Commercial trials of the super-modems are expected to begin by the middle of next year, with full-scale consumer testing by the end of 1997.

CNN'S Brian Nelson contributed to this report.

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