- Email: [email protected]
Bell operating companies
'70s, Xerox lost much of its toe-hold in the facsimile business, as its customers, then leasing their fax equipment, allowed their leases to expire. When asked to characterize their usage as either 'light', 'moderate', or 'heavy', nearly 40% characterized their usage as 'light'. The remainder were either 'moderate' or 'heavy'. While no formal definition of 'light' or other usage was
given to the respondents, it is significant that such a high percentage felt their usage was light. Since 'light' users have not yet abandoned their units, however, this appears to be good news for vendors who are concerned that limited usage might be an impetus to abandon fax usage in the future. (International Resource Development Inc, 6 Prowitt Street, Norwalk, CT 06855, USA.) [:3
Telecommunications integrated circuits IRD, USA (1985) $1650, 157 pp It is very unlikely that 1985 will be a good year for the semiconductor industry. In fact, some estimates say the market will be decreased by about 20% this year alone. But integrated circuits for communications equipment will see a 30% average growth rate for the rest of this decade, according to this report. In fact, even when growth resumes in the semiconductor market as a whole, telecommunications and data communications integrated circuits will continue to outpace the general chip market. This surprising conclusion is based on the rate of installation of new communications equipment combined with the use of chips in place of circuit boards. In particular the report sees the local area network and fiber-optic markets growing as a direct result of the low cost and small size of the communications chips now being designed for these systems. But consumer telephones, communicating computers, and several other types of equipment will also aid in making the communications integrated circuit market a multi-billion dollar business by the end of this centry. Over fifty major organizations in the communications IC marketplace are covered in the report. Both Japanese and European manufacturers of chips are covered, as are several of the larger overseas equipment manufacturers. These companies, while currently overshadowed by U.S.-
38
based semiconductor manufacturers in the communications IC field, are expected to catch up and in some cases surpass the sophistication of the American market. New technologies which are emerging in communications fields such as gallium arsenide (GaAs), silicon compilation, and Integrated Services Digital Networks (ISDN) are also analysed. Gallium arsenide may hold the key to the superfast speeds needed in the next generation of computers and switches. Already, the satellite and military equipment markets are using chips designed in GaAs, but the applications are just beginning. The new technology promises to open up the design field to the point where less training is necessary before a person can build chips. Not only will this shorten the design time, but it will also cut costs to the point where it no longer makes sense not to use ICs. The report points out that as communication speeds continue to increase, most equipment manufacturers will be forced to use communications-specific ICs if they wish to remain competitive. The alternative is for them to continue building bulky boxes, and watch others pass them by with small, lowcost and high-performance hardware built around I C s . (International Resource Development Inc., 6 Prowitt Street, Norwalk, CT 06855, USA. Tel: (203) 866-7800, Telex: 64 3452) []
Bell operating companies IRD, USA (1985) $1650, 193 pp Under the terms of the AT&T divestiture agreement, the Bell Operating Companies (now the exBOCs) were denied the dght to manufacture their own products. According to this report this could turn out to be a blessing in disguise. The computer/telecommunications industry is suffering from difficulties and manufacturers have to invest huge sums of money into product R&D. They then place all or most of their chips (both semiconductor and gambling) on single product lines. This means that they are not all that flexible, The ex-BOCs however have the virtue of flexibility. Investing money on an unsuccessful product will not spell total disaster for an ex-BOC. The same cannot be said for the manufacturer. The ex-BOC can very easily switch to a new product or even to a new area of concentration. Moreover, the ex-BOCs can afford to adsorb a run of bad luck in their roles as resellers: they will still have their local exchange businesses to keep them afloat. But the ex-BOCs are still arguing for the right to manufacture their own products. In the meantime, some ex-BOCs are coming perilously close to violating the spirit if not the actual wording of Judge Greene's Modified Final Decree. For some new equipment, the ex-BOCs are doing the designing, prototype testing and just about everything else except for the actual production. Ex-BOCs are also arranging for exclusive licensing contracts for equipment production: Southwestern Bell, for instance, has done this for its line of Freedom cordless phones which it distributes throughout the USA. Although it is doubtful that the ex-BOCs will be allowed back into manufacturing in the 1980s, there is one compelling argument for granting them that right. A strong argument can be made that it is the ex-BOCs, and only the ex-BOCs, that
computer communications
stand in the way of total domination of the domestic telecommunications hardware markets by japanese products. No matter what happens on the various regulatory fronts, the ex-BOC market for products and services for internal use and for resale is huge, and is anticipated to grow rapidly. From a
current $17 O00M (an impressive enough figure in its own right), the overall market is projected to grow to a staggering $70 000 M by 1995, of which some $55 O00M, or about 78%, will be for internal-use equipment. (International Resource Development Inc., 6 Prowitt Street, Norwalk CT 06855, USA) []
Telecommunications test equipment IRD, USA (1985) $1650, 137 pp The role of the US telecommunications manager has changed considerably over the past ten years. Not long ago, he was responsible mainly for cutting costs and overheads, but, according to this research report, the new competitive environment in the telecommunications industry has altered the position of the corporate telecommunications manager dramatically. Dealing with as many as 50 vendors of private lines, switched services, PABX equipment, modems, etc., he must now provide the detailed coordination -- electronic and h u m a n - - o f many different systems and services. Telecom
managers are being given unprecedented freedom, visibility, and salaries. They are also finding that they need to buy specialized voice and data test equipment in large quantities. The communications networks are no longer 'single vendor' systems, they must be supervised and managed, and sometimes repaired, by the telecom manager who, of course, now has a sizeable staff equipped with lots of test gear. Ironically, well-equipped corporate telecom managers, and their staff, often have more sophisticated equipment than the telephone companies and other common
Optical character recognition IRD, USA (1985) $1850, 237 pp Optical character recognition, linked to online signature verification, will 'revolutionize' the use of credit cards in the future, according to this report. The report predicts 'rapid movement' of optical character recognition (OCR) and other image processing technologies into a vadety of specialized market sectors, including credit-card verification, cheque processing and lawyers' 'discovery' searches. A dramatic decline in credit card fraud and theft is foreseen as a result of the new technology. But credit-card 'float' will also be drastically reduced; on-line verification will be linked with on-line processing, so that if payment is
vol 9 no 1 february 1986
made by credit card, the transaction will appear on the credit card statement in just a day or two, instead of month or two. Another upcoming use of OCR, linked with signature verification, is in cheque procesing at banks. Document truncation, the practice of reducing the number of documents used, for example, in the billing process is currently being promoted as reducing the costs of bank cheque processing. It has already been used by Amoco, the petroleum company, to centrally process credit card slips. In this application, an OCR reader equipped with an image processor reads numeric data off a credit card
carriers. This has triggered further spending on testing equipment by the carders. The testing equipment market increased to more than $600 M last year, says the report, and inludes some very profitable, comfortable little niches. Although AT&T is the largest single participant in the market, its market share is less than 20% and is likely to decline. The market is really too fragmented, and the fragments too small individually, for a giant company like AT&T to deal well with. According to the report, many of the new testing devices being introduced combine many different but related test and measurement instruments into a single unit, using microprocessors or microcomputers to control the progression of the tests. As test equipment becomes more user-friendly the level of automation increases, allowing a single technician to make remote tests of a number of circuits and facilities. The report analyses technological and market trends in telecommunications test equipment, and provides ten-year market forecasts for each segment of the market. (International Resource Development Inc., 6 Prowitt Street, Norwalk, CT 06855, USA.) []
slip, in the traditional OCR manner. The image processor creates a facsimile of each customer's signature from each slip. All the data is then fed to a computer for processing and is transferred onto a single page for customer billing, thus eliminating the need for the billing company to separate one copy of each credit card slip for forwarding to the customer, along with an invoice summary sheet. OCR devices should speed up the process of typesetting externally created text, and when newspapers are competing against each other, automated text entry may well spell the differrence in being the first to print a particular story. (International Resource Development Inc., 6 Prowitt Street, Norwalk, CT 06855, USA. Tek (203) 866-7800, Telex: 64 3452) []
39
given to the respondents, it is significant that such a high percentage felt their usage was light. Since 'light' users have not yet abandoned their units, however, this appears to be good news for vendors who are concerned that limited usage might be an impetus to abandon fax usage in the future. (International Resource Development Inc, 6 Prowitt Street, Norwalk, CT 06855, USA.) [:3
Telecommunications integrated circuits IRD, USA (1985) $1650, 157 pp It is very unlikely that 1985 will be a good year for the semiconductor industry. In fact, some estimates say the market will be decreased by about 20% this year alone. But integrated circuits for communications equipment will see a 30% average growth rate for the rest of this decade, according to this report. In fact, even when growth resumes in the semiconductor market as a whole, telecommunications and data communications integrated circuits will continue to outpace the general chip market. This surprising conclusion is based on the rate of installation of new communications equipment combined with the use of chips in place of circuit boards. In particular the report sees the local area network and fiber-optic markets growing as a direct result of the low cost and small size of the communications chips now being designed for these systems. But consumer telephones, communicating computers, and several other types of equipment will also aid in making the communications integrated circuit market a multi-billion dollar business by the end of this centry. Over fifty major organizations in the communications IC marketplace are covered in the report. Both Japanese and European manufacturers of chips are covered, as are several of the larger overseas equipment manufacturers. These companies, while currently overshadowed by U.S.-
38
based semiconductor manufacturers in the communications IC field, are expected to catch up and in some cases surpass the sophistication of the American market. New technologies which are emerging in communications fields such as gallium arsenide (GaAs), silicon compilation, and Integrated Services Digital Networks (ISDN) are also analysed. Gallium arsenide may hold the key to the superfast speeds needed in the next generation of computers and switches. Already, the satellite and military equipment markets are using chips designed in GaAs, but the applications are just beginning. The new technology promises to open up the design field to the point where less training is necessary before a person can build chips. Not only will this shorten the design time, but it will also cut costs to the point where it no longer makes sense not to use ICs. The report points out that as communication speeds continue to increase, most equipment manufacturers will be forced to use communications-specific ICs if they wish to remain competitive. The alternative is for them to continue building bulky boxes, and watch others pass them by with small, lowcost and high-performance hardware built around I C s . (International Resource Development Inc., 6 Prowitt Street, Norwalk, CT 06855, USA. Tel: (203) 866-7800, Telex: 64 3452) []
Bell operating companies IRD, USA (1985) $1650, 193 pp Under the terms of the AT&T divestiture agreement, the Bell Operating Companies (now the exBOCs) were denied the dght to manufacture their own products. According to this report this could turn out to be a blessing in disguise. The computer/telecommunications industry is suffering from difficulties and manufacturers have to invest huge sums of money into product R&D. They then place all or most of their chips (both semiconductor and gambling) on single product lines. This means that they are not all that flexible, The ex-BOCs however have the virtue of flexibility. Investing money on an unsuccessful product will not spell total disaster for an ex-BOC. The same cannot be said for the manufacturer. The ex-BOC can very easily switch to a new product or even to a new area of concentration. Moreover, the ex-BOCs can afford to adsorb a run of bad luck in their roles as resellers: they will still have their local exchange businesses to keep them afloat. But the ex-BOCs are still arguing for the right to manufacture their own products. In the meantime, some ex-BOCs are coming perilously close to violating the spirit if not the actual wording of Judge Greene's Modified Final Decree. For some new equipment, the ex-BOCs are doing the designing, prototype testing and just about everything else except for the actual production. Ex-BOCs are also arranging for exclusive licensing contracts for equipment production: Southwestern Bell, for instance, has done this for its line of Freedom cordless phones which it distributes throughout the USA. Although it is doubtful that the ex-BOCs will be allowed back into manufacturing in the 1980s, there is one compelling argument for granting them that right. A strong argument can be made that it is the ex-BOCs, and only the ex-BOCs, that
computer communications
stand in the way of total domination of the domestic telecommunications hardware markets by japanese products. No matter what happens on the various regulatory fronts, the ex-BOC market for products and services for internal use and for resale is huge, and is anticipated to grow rapidly. From a
current $17 O00M (an impressive enough figure in its own right), the overall market is projected to grow to a staggering $70 000 M by 1995, of which some $55 O00M, or about 78%, will be for internal-use equipment. (International Resource Development Inc., 6 Prowitt Street, Norwalk CT 06855, USA) []
Telecommunications test equipment IRD, USA (1985) $1650, 137 pp The role of the US telecommunications manager has changed considerably over the past ten years. Not long ago, he was responsible mainly for cutting costs and overheads, but, according to this research report, the new competitive environment in the telecommunications industry has altered the position of the corporate telecommunications manager dramatically. Dealing with as many as 50 vendors of private lines, switched services, PABX equipment, modems, etc., he must now provide the detailed coordination -- electronic and h u m a n - - o f many different systems and services. Telecom
managers are being given unprecedented freedom, visibility, and salaries. They are also finding that they need to buy specialized voice and data test equipment in large quantities. The communications networks are no longer 'single vendor' systems, they must be supervised and managed, and sometimes repaired, by the telecom manager who, of course, now has a sizeable staff equipped with lots of test gear. Ironically, well-equipped corporate telecom managers, and their staff, often have more sophisticated equipment than the telephone companies and other common
Optical character recognition IRD, USA (1985) $1850, 237 pp Optical character recognition, linked to online signature verification, will 'revolutionize' the use of credit cards in the future, according to this report. The report predicts 'rapid movement' of optical character recognition (OCR) and other image processing technologies into a vadety of specialized market sectors, including credit-card verification, cheque processing and lawyers' 'discovery' searches. A dramatic decline in credit card fraud and theft is foreseen as a result of the new technology. But credit-card 'float' will also be drastically reduced; on-line verification will be linked with on-line processing, so that if payment is
vol 9 no 1 february 1986
made by credit card, the transaction will appear on the credit card statement in just a day or two, instead of month or two. Another upcoming use of OCR, linked with signature verification, is in cheque procesing at banks. Document truncation, the practice of reducing the number of documents used, for example, in the billing process is currently being promoted as reducing the costs of bank cheque processing. It has already been used by Amoco, the petroleum company, to centrally process credit card slips. In this application, an OCR reader equipped with an image processor reads numeric data off a credit card
carriers. This has triggered further spending on testing equipment by the carders. The testing equipment market increased to more than $600 M last year, says the report, and inludes some very profitable, comfortable little niches. Although AT&T is the largest single participant in the market, its market share is less than 20% and is likely to decline. The market is really too fragmented, and the fragments too small individually, for a giant company like AT&T to deal well with. According to the report, many of the new testing devices being introduced combine many different but related test and measurement instruments into a single unit, using microprocessors or microcomputers to control the progression of the tests. As test equipment becomes more user-friendly the level of automation increases, allowing a single technician to make remote tests of a number of circuits and facilities. The report analyses technological and market trends in telecommunications test equipment, and provides ten-year market forecasts for each segment of the market. (International Resource Development Inc., 6 Prowitt Street, Norwalk, CT 06855, USA.) []
slip, in the traditional OCR manner. The image processor creates a facsimile of each customer's signature from each slip. All the data is then fed to a computer for processing and is transferred onto a single page for customer billing, thus eliminating the need for the billing company to separate one copy of each credit card slip for forwarding to the customer, along with an invoice summary sheet. OCR devices should speed up the process of typesetting externally created text, and when newspapers are competing against each other, automated text entry may well spell the differrence in being the first to print a particular story. (International Resource Development Inc., 6 Prowitt Street, Norwalk, CT 06855, USA. Tek (203) 866-7800, Telex: 64 3452) []
39