Re: Your claim of there being no contentiousness in the development of
    V.34
Please note the comments of DataQuest analyst Lisa Pelgrim.
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from comp.dcom.telecom
From: Eric Florack 
Subject: 56k Standards Fight is a Patent Fight, Too
Organization: TELECOM Digest
This has been under discussion, and this adds information to that
discussion.
/E
Fighting Over the Bone
by Brian McWilliams, PC World News Radio
September 18, 1997
Setting international modem standards used to be a private process
carried on behind closed doors, but the heated discussions over the
pending 56-kbps modem have spilled into the streets -- again. This time,
it's Lucent Technologies that claims to be in the driver's seat
regarding intellectual property.
"We think that the patents we have will limit the ability of other
parties to get patents that read on the core of the technology," says
Bob Rango, general manager of Lucent's modem chip-making group. "We
didn't say that no other patents would be granted, but since we invented
this thing back in 1992, we started filing patents way back then. I
mean, the patents that we're getting issued now were filed two to three
years ago."
Lucent was responding today to the announcement earlier this month by
3Com that it had exclusive rights to the intellectual property of
inventor Brent Townshend, who claims to have patents pending on core
56-kbps modem technology.
Rango said that Lucent sent a letter to the International
Telecommunications Union today saying that it will license its patents
on PCM, or pulse code modulation, to other companies under reasonable
terms and conditions. 3Com, of course, earlier made a similar
announcement regarding its patents.
Dataquest analyst Lisa Pelgrim says it's all a continuation of the
jockeying that's historically occurred during the modem standards
process. The only difference today is that PC users are closely
following the twists and turns.
"In past standards, most recently V.34, there were a lot of issues that
came up in court that were not publicized," notes Pelgrim. "One of the
things that has happened with 56K is that it has been very public. A lot
of it comes from the Internet taking off and so many people finding that
they do want faster [access] speeds, which makes 56K a big story."
(Eric notes: Not to mention the lack of real commitment to ISDN from
locals, as has been suggested previously in this forum.)
One significant element of Lucent's intellectual property that we know
won't be in the ITU draft standard that's in the works now is Lucent's
technology for doing PCM on the upstream side of the connection. Last
January, Lucent said it had developed and was testing PCM for
transmission from the PC to a host modem, and had been able to get
nearly bisymmetrical connect speeds with upstream speeds of 45 kbps. But
Rango today said Lucent had to shelve that technology for compatibility
reasons.
"In order to expedite the technology deployment on K56flex, we elected
to do V.34 upstream because we wanted to get the quickest
interoperability with our partner, Rockwell," he explained.
Rango says Lucent and other modem companies involved in the ITU
standards process are doing everything they can to get a draft standard
in January. He said most are already designing their modem code to
reflect the standards work that's occurred so far.
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Regards...
Craig
aka: craig.ford@p0.f2001.n106.z1.conchbbs.com
aka: cford@ix.netcom.com
... You didn't expect mere facts to sway my opinion did you?
--- Blue Wave/386 v2.30 [NR]
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