Industry leaders to conduct ADSL interoperability testing

Alcatel, Analog Devices and Texas Instruments plan interoperability testing among their asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL) silicon solutions. This initiative will accelerate ADSL service deployment worldwide by creating an open market place for equipment manufacturers through multiple sources of standards-based silicon that work together across silicon platforms.

As a result of this effort, service providers will be able to deploy with confidence central office equipment that will interoperate with a variety of customer premises equipment. Customers will benefit because they can make purchasing decisions on equipment and services without worrying about the type of equipment used in the telephone network.

The interoperability project will allow the three silicon vendors to validate interoperability based on discrete multi-tone (DMT) at the physical layer and will concentrate on link and network layer interoperability based on asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) transport.

This initiative is based on the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) standard T1.413 Issue 2 status as of the March meeting of ANSI. The joint testing will create more momentum to ensure that a wide range of equipment -- both central office and customer premise equipment -- will interoperate.

The three companies will conduct interoperability testing independently and will migrate, when interoperability is proven, to a neutral testing facility where DMT vendors can do interoperability testing with their equipment.