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To: Leonard Chua <lenc@earth.infinetconsulting.com>, freebsd-isp@FreeBSD.ORG,
        freebsd-hardware@FreeBSD.ORG
From: Doug Russell <drussell@internode.net>
Subject: Re: 56K vs X2?
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At 09:26 AM 1/22/97 -0800, Leonard Chua wrote:

>"We have announced an agreement with Lucent Technology on the 56k
>modem technology.  A copy of the press release is available on our Web 
>page.  Lucent and Rockwell will be compatible.  Between the two of them,
>they own 75-80% of the modem market.  Thus, we will be compatible with 
>75-80% of the modems out there.  USR does not appear to have any plans to be

That isn't true.  Even if they have that much of the market, very few (if
any) of the modems with those chipsets out there are upgradeable to 56K.
Only new modems sold will be able to use the higher speeds.

>compatible with other 56k technologies, so their 56k will only work with 
>the other 20-25% of themodems which are also USR. ....."

But, all Courier V.Everything modems ever built and a good chunk of the
Sportster modems are upgradeable via a simple software upgrade.  Older
sportster models, I believe, may require an EPROM swap or something to
update the firmware.

I own several Courier series modems, and have upgraded them with various
versions of the software over the past 5 years or so (I have even older
models as well, but they aren't upgradeable :-)) and the whole idea works
very slick.

I'd also like to point out that there was at least one company that
announced that it would be licencing X2 from USR, I can't remember who it
was, Cirrus Logic perhaps....  It is on USR's X2 web page, however.  So it
isn't going to be JUST USR.  It is also worth noting that long before V.32
appeared on the scene, USR was transferring data at 9600 (and later
14.4Kbps) with a proprietary protocol called HST, and it was quite popular
even though only USR HST modems supported it.

Later......                                             <Doug>