Anybody who has waited a lifetime for a page to download from the Internet, will welcome the agreement which has been reached on an industry standard for a speedier analogue modem.
The controversial 56-kilobitsper-second modem went on sale last year, but take-up has been slow in the absence of an agreed industry standard. Last week, the International Telecommunications Union endorsed the new standard, after a year and a half of wrangling.
This is good news for domestic PC users who until now could only avail of modem speeds of 28.8 kbps or slower.
The development of the information superhighway tends to centre largely on a high-speed backbone to the Internet, but the basis of access for most people is the copper wire telephone line connection from the domestic PC to the local exchange. Once data is no longer travelling via fibre optic cable, it can decelerate to a snail's pace.
Modems allow computers to send and receive information over telephone lines. Until recently the fastest rate achieved was 33.6 kbps. Now the 56 kbps modulates transmission speeds digitally and can receive up to 14 pages of single-spaced text per second.
There are limits to its application in that information can still only be sent at 33.6 kbps speeds and it works on the basis that phone connections are entirely digital, right down to the last connection to the user often termed the "last mile". It requires compatible modems at server sites and the telephone line must be crystal clear or the modem rate will revert to 33.6 kbps.
Mr Chris Higgins, IT manager with Internet service provider, EUnet, says the company is going to wait until the industry standard is officially set and until the modems comply fully before deploying 56 kbps around its post office protocol servers. "The 56 kbps is faster, but it requires all telecoms lines to be digital, which isn't always the case. We would recommend installing ISDN lines, because they deliver 64 kbps speeds in both directions."
EUnet targets commercial businesses and generally deploys ISDN to its customers. But there may be implications for other ISPs who serve home PC users. If 56 kbps modems have to be installed across all their POP servers, it will be a very costly investment, which will double the amount of traffic capable of passing through.
"That's a phenomenal outlay, with no increase in revenue for the ISPs," says Mr Higgins.
While ISDN may be faster, it is also expensive, costing several hundred pounds to install, with a further charge for ISP connection to the Internet. At present businesses are more likely to put in ISDN lines, as they are better for transfers of large files, and offer an instant connection to the Internet without a dial-up wait.
Recently Telecom Eireann announced that ISDN costs would be cut dramatically to come into line with standard telephony charges by the middle of this year.
The 56 kbps will be priced between £80, for an internal modem, and £170 for a modem carrying voice port and fax functions. However, Mr Brendan Garry, country manager of 3Com Ireland, warns of the limitations to its application.
"The 56 kbps is designed primarily for Internet access. Potential buyers should first determine how far they are from their nearest telephone exchange, and establish whether they have a digital path from home. There can only be one line conversion on the path from the telephone exchange to the customer," he says.
People living in rural areas or higher than about 12,000 ft are most likely to be affected by these limitations in the technology.
Is there a case then for Telecom to upgrade its network in these areas? Mr Anthony Bermingham, managing director of telecommunications company, Lake Communications, says this would probably not be merited because the outlay would be too great.
it is an efficient use of bandwidth," he says. Mr Anthony Bermingham, managing director of telecommunications company, Lake Communications.
Last year, Lake hosted a meeting in Dublin of technical experts from more than 40 of the world's leading datacommunications groups in an effort to agree the new standard.
Leading modem companies, including 3Com, Rockwell International and Lucent Technologies said last week they would introduce standards based on the new modem in the next quarter.
According to Mr Garry, 3Com Ireland is committed to providing customers of older 56 kbps with a free upgrade which they can download to their modems.
US Robotics, a company now part of 3Com, originally backed a standard called x2. Another, led by Rockwell and Lucent, backed a standard called K56flex. Because the modems were based on different standards they could not interchange, which put companies and consumers off buying the 56 kbps.
The ITU agreement should prompt an increase in product sales, with the number of modems shipped each year likely to rise from 50 million in 1997 to 75 million by 2000, according to VisionQuest 2000, a market researcher.
The advances of ISDN, fibre optic and cable technologies have highlighted the limitations of the copper wire phone line. Recently a US-based company, Diamond Multimedia, developed Shotgun a product which bonds two phone lines to double transmission speeds using the 56 kbps modem. But it is impractical, as it requires two phone lines and two modems to work efficiently. It is now widely held that the analogue modem has reached its limits.
Those in the know in the Internet industry are touting xDSL technology as the great hope for the future of the copper wire. The best known version, ADSL will offer speeds 50 times faster than existing modems. But local telephone exchanges need to be rewired and a terminal device is required at each end of the cable, which will make widescale deployment very costly. HDSL and VDSL are the latest alternatives to come onstream, though they are by no means perfect just yet.
In the interim the 56 kbps offers faster access from the home, which is a welcome development for anyone using the Internet on a regular basis and who has come to abhor the arrival of the telephone bill. But that is provided you are hooked up to a digital path from the local telephone exchange.
