Lucent, Alcatel Announce Interoperable ADSL

European-based network systems provider Alcatel (Paris, France) and chip maker Lucent Technologies Microelectronics Group (Allentown, PA) today announced interoperability between Lucent's Asymmetrical Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL) consumer modem chipsets and Alcatel's Digital Subscriber Line Access Multiplexer (DSLAM) telephone central office (CO) equipment.

Both firms bill this ADSL achievement as a milestone in the interoperability testing program between the two companies. That program began in August 1998 in Antwerp, Belgium. It continued at independent US test sites, and culminated at the SuperComm '99 ADSL interoperability showcase in Atlanta, GA earlier this month.

The interoperability covers end-to-end applications from PCs to COs, and is based on G.Lite and a subset of ANSI's T1.413 Issue 2 ADSL recommendations. It includes the Physical Layer of the networking protocol stack through the Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) protocol layer, involving Internet applications such as video streaming and Internet Web browser activity.