ISDN and donkeys

Hardly a day goes by without us hearing about the digital superhighway. We live with the fact that the wires connecting our telephones are analog medium. This is the equivalent of a space shuttle taking off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, repairing satellites in orbit, landing at Edwards Air Force Base, California, and then being pulled by two donkeys across the U.S. back to Florida. This two-donkey journey is the analog subscriber line.

These donkeys should have retired 10 years ago. ISDN was the first specified Digital Subscriber Line (DSL). It was a viable technique which originated in Europe for data and voice transmission over copper. It was digital all the way, without donkeys. But unfortunately it never took off.

European operators were the main reason for this. Even though they championed ISDN, invested in their switches to roll it out -- and gave it a lot of hype -- the market never materialized. Having a stake in the existing data transmission infrastructure, they conspired against it.

They marketed it as voice technology. It is not. It's data transmission technology. Had the Europeans marketed it as such, ISDN might have had a chance. But if people had started using ISDN, operators would have lost revenue. They were supplied with X.25 packet switch networks and leased lines for whose services they were charged obscene high prices.

The prices were so high, that according to Businessweek one company which was printing the data, hired a pickup truck and hauled the printouts across town instead of downloading the data via the network. Donkeys again!

And even though people were charged a lot for their packet services, no one's voice was transmitted. ISDN at least bundles voice and data. The subscriber line was priced so that it would never compete with the packet network. In the 1980's, the PC was prominent in society, although not yet dominant as the Internet and deregulation were still figments of the imagination. ISDN had no chance. It was viewed as a shuttle flying atop a modified Boeing 747 from Edwards Air Force Base back to Florida. A good analogy for a Digital Subscriber Line.

OSVALDO COELHO

Bandung, West Java