Milestone-Proposal talk:ADSL

Advocates’ Checklist

1. Is proposal for an achievement rather than for a person? If the citation includes a person's name, have the proposers provided the required justification for inclusion of the person's name?
2. Was proposed achievement a significant advance rather than an incremental improvement to an existing technology?
3. Were there prior or contemporary achievements of a similar nature?
4. Has the achievement truly led to a functioning, useful, or marketable technology?
5. Is proposal adequately supported by significant references (minimum of five) such as patents, contemporary newspaper articles, journal articles, or citations to pages in scholarly books? At least one of the references from a peer-reviewed scholarly book or journal article. The full text of the material, not just the references, shall be present. If the supporting texts are copyright-encumbered and cannot be posted on the ETHW for intellectual property reasons, the proposers shall email a copy to the History Center so that it can be forwarded to the advocate. If the advocate does not consider the supporting references sufficient, the advocate may ask the proposer(s) for additional ones.
6. Are the scholarly references sufficiently recent?
7. Is proposed citation readable and understandable by the general public?
8. Does the proposed plaque site fulfill the requirements?
9. Is the proposal quality comparable to that of IEEE publications?
10. Scientific and technical units correct? (e.g. km, mm, hertz, etc.) Are acronyms correct and properly upperercased or lowercased?
11. Date formats correct as specified in Section 6 of Milestones Program Guidelines? https://ieeemilestones.ethw.org/Helpful_Hints_on_Citations,_Plaque_Locations
12. It is the advocate's responsibility to confirm that the independent reviewers have no conflict of interest (e.g. worked for a company or a team involved in the achievement being proposed, published with the proposer(s), or had a project related to the achievement funded). An example of a way to do this would be searching publications on IEEE Xplore.

Reviewers’ Checklist

1. Is suggested wording of the Plaque Citation accurate?
2. Is evidence presented in the proposal of sufficient substance and accuracy to support the Plaque Citation?
3. Does proposed milestone represent a significant technical achievement?
4. Were there similar or competing achievements? If so, have the proposers adequately described these and their relationship to the achievement being proposed?

In answering the questions above, the History Committee asks that reviewers apply a similar level of rigor to that used to peer-review an article, or evaluate a research proposal. Some elaboration is desirable. Of course the Committee would welcome any additional observations that you may have regarding this proposal.

Submission and Approval Log

Submitted date: 16 April 2021
Advocate approval date:
History Committee approval date:
Board of Directors approval date:

Original Citation Title and Text -- Administrator4 (talk) 15:52, 29 July 2022 (UTC)

ADSL: expediting Broadband Internet Access for society

Broadband as we know it began with the first highly integrated ADSL solution, created in Antwerp by Alcatel. The system was revolutionary, taking Internet access speeds to new heights while making broadband affordable. The ingenuity of Alcatel engineers truly accelerated Broadband Internet availability for society, changing our lives and the world, as we know it.

Comment from Tom Starr (published by Wim van Etten on behalf of Tom Starr) -- Wvetten (talk) 12:57, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

ADSL IEEE award

This comment has to be considered as the fourth review!

ADSL (asymmetric digital subscriber line) is a milestone in telecommunications, paving the way for the internet. Since the introduction of ADSL (asymmetric digital subscriber line) service in the mid-1990’s, a billion people in more than one hundred countries have enjoyed broadband access via ADSL and the newer forms of DSL, which enable broadband services up to two gigabits per second. Back in 1990, when ADSL existed only in laboratories, many people doubted it would succeed. Would ADSL work over poorly balanced and noisy telephone lines? Would anyone but a few nerds be willing to pay extra for broadband access? Would the telephone companies learn how to install, operate, and manage switched data? Would the cost of a chip with one hundred million transistors be affordable? With vision and faith, ADSL vendors and service providers built it, and hundreds of millions of customers signed up. Breakthrough advances in modulation, coding, equalization, synchronization, network architecture, and data protocols enabled the quantum leap from 34 kb/s voiceband modems to multi-megabit broadband access. ADSL standards created by Committee T1 (USA), ETSI (Europe), ITU-T, and the Broadband Forum (originally named “ADSL Forum”) drove costs down and opened the market for myriad competing vendors. Even today, millions are still served by DSL technology while others are served by fiber-optic access, built upon the lessons learned from ADSL. The importance of ADSL was recently highlighted at a US White House National Medal of Technology and Innovation awards ceremony. The internet we know today, with video streaming, video conferencing, work and study from home, would not be possible without the broadband access founded by ADSL.

The wording of the proposed citation on the plaque is accurate. The accompanying proposal accurately describes the historic technical achievement. ADSL’s innovation is further supported by hundreds of patents. The proposal discusses the related and competing technologies, and correctly concludes that ADSL far exceeded the breadth of the deployment of the alternative technologies for more than a decade.

Thomas Starr – IEEE Senior Life Member, Chairman ITU-T WP1/15 (DSL and fiber standards), Chairman emeritus T1E1.4 (US DSL standards), President emeritus DSL Forum.

Reviewer #1 -- Wvetten (talk) 09:56, 11 October 2024 (UTC)

In your critique of the proposal, the Committee would like you to assess three particular aspects of the proposal:

1. Is the suggested wording of the Plaque Citation accurate?

Yes, Alcatel Antwerp was a frontrunner in developing the ADSL technology. I was responsible for ADSL roll-out at Belgacom (now Proximus) and they were by far the leading ADSL player in the industry when ADSL was rolled out in the 90’s. We chose Alcatel as sole supplier for our whole ADSL network rollout.

2. Is the evidence presented in the proposal of sufficient substance and accuracy to support the Citation?

Yes

3. Does the proposed milestone represent a significant technical achievement?

Yes, ADSL was a gamechanger for telcos allowing to offer internet services including pictures and video content. It opened up a whole new world changing the way we work, live and entertain ourselves.

ADSL was a kickstarter for IPTV services, music and video streaming and it led to the digital transformation of virtually all industries, including the telecom industry. It allows telcos to move into other verticals and all industries to become more efficient. It allowed operators to maximize the usage of copper networks and to offer digital services immediately. It led to further evolutions like VDSL and it allowed to roll-out in parallel a FTTH network which is time and capital intensive.

Reviewer #2 -- Wvetten (talk) 10:39, 11 October 2024 (UTC)

Summary

This document is offered as an expert review of Alcatel’s (now Nokia’s) ADSL Milestone proposal made to the IEEE (Docket #:2021-04. Last edited on 16 April 2021. htps://ieeemilestones.ethw.org/Milestone-Proposal:ADSL). The review focused on three questions asked by the IEEE History Commitee Member (Celia Shahnaz) on 12 April 2024:

1. Is the suggested wording of the Plaque Citation accurate?

2. Is the evidence presented in the proposal of sufficient substance and accuracy to support the Citation?

3. Does the proposed milestone represent a significant technical achievement?

As a reviewer I have first-hand experience of the innovation of ADSL technology because I was involved in the international standardisation and development of ADSL (and other DSL technologies) when working for BT plc (1984-2020).

In summary, I find that the answers to the above questions to be positive in all three cases and I therefore recommend the approval by the IEEE of the submission made by Nokia for ADSL. My rationale is given in the body of this review.

1. Is the suggested wording of the Plaque Citation accurate?

The seminal and pioneering work on DMT based ADSL was conducted by Professor John Cioffi et. al. at Amati Communications Corporation prior to 1995 and Nokia has rightfully acknowledged this. Nokia (then Alcatel) was instrumental in building upon the foundations laid by Professor Cioffi and his team to develop a commercially viable, standardised and highly integrated ADSL chip-set upon which an end-end access solution was built (both DSLAM and NT/CPE). This paved the way for Telecommunication Operators to offer affordable broadband internet access to the mass market. Hence, I feel that the proposed wording of the plaque citation “Broadband – born here in 1995” is justified because Alcatel was instrumental in the birth of the first commercially viable, mass market, DMT-based end-end ADSL solution for broadband internet access.

2. Is the evidence presented of sufficient substance and accuracy to support the Citation?

I find that the evidence presented is accurate both technically and chronologically. I was intimately involved with the design and development of ADSL during the 1990s and witnessed the work of the Alcatel Antwerp engineering team.

In 1993 my home was the first in the UK to have Video on Demand via the telephone line provided using pre-standardised DMT-based ADSL technology from Amati. I was also present for the impulse noise testing at the ADSL Olympics in North America which enabled ANSI/ATIS to select the DMT line code for standardisation (T1.413) in March 1993. The subsequent work by the Alcatel engineering team to pioneer the development of the highly integrated DMT-based ADSL chip-set and subsequent end-end DSLAM/CPE product is correctly described in the comprehensive milestone text and the references cited fully support this. I knew many of the authors of the referenced papers personally and can vouch for their credibility and applicability in respect of the ADSL milestone.

3. Does the proposed milestone represent a significant technical achievement?

The proposed milestone is very significant because it: a) provided a word-class cutting-edge solution to a highly complex set of technical digital transceiver design issues, b) integrated computationally intensive and cutting-edge digital signal processing into a custom low-powered chip and c) was further developed to provide a complete commercially viable end-end access solution (DSLAM and NT/CPE).

In the late 1940s Claude Shannon predicted the information capacity of a band-limited channel. In the early to mid-1990s Professor Cioffi of Stanford and Amati showed the world (and demonstrated) how it could be done technically for the twisted telephone wire, thereby releasing megabit/s access speeds.

Effectively the twisted pair telephone channel was split into over 500 independent sub-channels using Discrete Multi-Tone (DMT) ADSL technology. Building on the selection of DMT for the North American line code standard the Alcatel engineering team in Antwerp then developed the first commercially viable mass market solution to release the inherent information capacity in the ubiquitous twisted-pair telephone wiring. During the period described in the milestone (and subsequently) Alcatel made valuable technical standards contributions to ANSI/ATIS, ETSI and the ITU-T to ensure DMT had a global applicability as the line code of choice for ADSL. The engineering work involved in developing and standardising ADSL should not be underestimated and the Alcatel milestone proposal rightly details many of the key technical issues that required leading-edge solutions derived from research, development and standardisation.

The Alcatel ADSL innovation clearly paved the way for affordable mass market broadband internet access, and one can argue that this innovation enabled broadband internet access to become the fourth utility for millions of households after water, gas and electricity. It truly changed the way people lived their lives and Alcatel made it standards compliant and enabled their competitors to access the innovaton thereby reducing cost, increasing the market, providing choice for both telecommunication operators and also end-user consumers.

I have no hesitation in determining that the Alcatel ADSL milestone represents a very significant technical achievement that the engineering team in Antwerp can be rightly proud of. I therefore commend the Alcatel ADSL milestone to the IEEE History Commitee.

Reviewer #3 -- Wvetten (talk) 11:04, 11 October 2024 (UTC)

Context

I have first hand experience of the development of the ADSL technology during the period covered by this IEEE Milestone proposal. I was a Board Director and Chair of the Technical Committee (akin to CTO role) of the ADSL Forum (now the Broadband Forum) from 1994 -2010. Between 1992 and 1999 I was head of BTs New Transmission Technologies Group and then Technical Area Leader for the Copper Access team at BT Labs. During this time we developed and delivered trials of Video on Demand over ADSL, using the new DMT ADSL technology, equipment and emerging standards cited in the IEEE Milestone proposal.

1. Is the suggested wording of the Plaque Citation accurate?

The DMT modulation technique used for ADSL (and subsequently VDSL) was invented and prototyped by Professor John Cioffi, as acknowledged in the proposal. Alcatel took this technology and turned it into standardised, cost-effective and scalable network equipment (the DSL Access Multiplexo or DSLAM) and customer premises equipment (the broadband modem). This integration and productization of the DMT ADSL technology was critical for mass market roll-out and adoption.

Alcatel’s adherence to and promotion of the standardised variant of ADSL via interoperability testing (and licensing) was also key to promotion of an open eco system that ultimately resulted in the ability of consumers to procure their ADSL modems/routers from retail outlets, knowing that they would interwork with their chosen ISP and network provider. The Alcatel “Mantra” USB modem was also an iconic design, breaking away from traditional grey boxes for CPE and signified the break from the legacy narrow-band era to an exciting new broadband era.

Hence I believe that the suggested plaque citation “Broadband – born here in 1995” is accurate and justified.

2. Is the evidence presented of sufficient substance and accuracy to support the Citation?

During the period covered by this IEEE Milestone proposal, I was an active member of the ANSI/ATIS T1.413 committee, representing BT. This was the period of the “line code wars” which ultimately resulted in the ADSL standard being based on DMT. Shortly after this I was a founding board member of the ADSL Forum whose mission was to take the physical layer modem technology and specify the network and customer equipment functionality and overall architecture so that services could be delivered to customers. Consequently I can confirm the substance and accuracy of the proposal’s description of Alcatel’s role in driving the technology to transform it from “bit pump” to deployable networks and products.

3. Does the proposed milestone represent a significant technical achievement?

The development by Alcatel of scalable ADSL products was the catalyst for large scale deployment of broadband, which today is almost ubiquitous (and taken for granted in most countries). Even though we have increasing deployments of Fibre To The Home (FTTH) and some countries have reasonable cable network footprints, DSL still persists in many regions due to the near universal coverage of premises by traditional copper phone lines. DSL was once described as an interim technology – with an interim period of 40 years! Many people would not have been able to effectively work from home during the recent Covid pandemic if it hadn’t been for DSL technology. The development of ADSL was the first step n facilitating this capability.

The ability to deliver Video on Demand (VoD) over ADSL was the precursor to today’s video streaming services and also provided the key enabler for broadband Internet access. However, its development was fraught with challenges. The copper phone lines were designed to carry narrow-band voice, not broadband data. Hence significant technical innovation was required to mitigate the effects of crosstalk, impulse noise, water ingress etc. in this hostile environment. Beyond the operation of the basic transmission system, the technology needed to be highly integrated so that it was fit for deployment. This enabled network equipment (DSLAMs) to be able to contain high packing density of the ADSL modems to fit within the limited space/power of the Central Office environment. It also enabled compact customer premise equipment (without noisy fans). Without the ADSL technology and product development pioneered by Alcatel, deployment of ADSL broadband simply would not have been practical or commercially viable, Hence in my view the ADSL milestone represents a significant technical achievement that had a profound impact on global connectivity.

The Title and Citation Need to Be Rewritten -- Bberg (talk) 18:39, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

Thank you all for your work on this proposal. The background information is nicely detailed, but both the title and citation are not acceptable in their current form.

Regarding the title of "ADSL: expediting Broadband Internet Access for society" - the ADSL acronym should be explained, and the date or date range should follow the title. Based on the statement in the proposal of "In the period between 1993 and 1997, the Alcatel team invented and developed an end-to-end ADSL solution," a title of "Development of Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL) Technology, 1993-1997" seems appropriate.

Regarding the citation, the first statement of "Broadband. Born here in 1995" is not appropriate, particuarly as proposed for a separate line in the citation since a citation should be formatted as a short single paragraph. Instead of simply "born here," the citation should explain at a high level what it took to create ADSL since its current reading includes no technical information whatsoever. As such, the citation does not satisfy a key aspect of all Milestones: to educate the public.

The citation does not need to cite Alcatel twice. I don't doubt that "the ingenuity of Alcatel engineers" was critical to the success of their creation of ADSL, but their ingenuity is implicit in the fact that they created ADSL. As such, this statement is not appropriate in a citation. Instead, an explanation of what ADSL is, and a brief description of how it came about, would would be a much better way to give credit to these engineers, and this should be stated in the context of important points in this 1993-1997 timeframe.

A key point to include appears to be that ADSL brought broadband to the masses much earlier than the more expensive fiber. Further, since apparently all of the 1993-1997 work was done in Antwerp, and since the plaque is proposed to be installed in Copernicuslaan, I advise that you cite Antwerp in the citation.

I look forward to seeing a rewrite of the title, and a citation that better honors the impact of Alcatel's engineers with their important accomplishment.

Thank you. Brian Berg, Milestones Subcommittee Chair