TeleChoice consultant Kieran Taylor is optimistic that by 1999, volume deployment of DSL will drive down monthly line costs to $50--a pittance compared with today's $800 to $1,000 for T1 services. More conservative estimates put the 1999 monthly line charge nearer $500 to $800. Taylor, however, says 20 to 30 CLECs (competitive local exchange carriers) are offering DSL services at speeds similar to T1 at about half the price of T1.

Although most incumbent local exchange companies lag their CLEC counterparts, U S West was expected to become the first regional Bell to make DSL commercially available. Its new MegaBit Services are slated to be available this month in Phoenix at 192 Kbps ($45 per month), 320 Kbps ($65) and 704 Kbps ($130); unlimited Internet access will be available for about $20 more. In addition, corporations and ISPs can purchase the services for traffic aggregation and oversubscribe the 704-Kbps MegaBusiness service up to DS-3.

The strategy puts U S West ahead of the regional Bell pack. Unless directly challenged by high-speed cable modems or CLECs offering DSL, these incumbent telcos have an incentive to drag their feet--primarily because DSL can cannibalize some higher-priced T1 services. Of course, DSL and T1 aren't totally interchangeable. Taylor points out that T1 can support more voice channels than DSL and, because T1 is symmetric, it doesn't have the upstream bandwidth limitations of DSL (600 Kbps to 1 Mbps). Users also have more T1 equipment choices today and greater confidence in T1 reliability. DSL, on the other hand, is cheaper and pivotally positioned for high-speed Internet access, especially multimedia e-commerce tasks.

For now, though, DSL is generally considered the quickest and cheapest route to high-speed local access for business. And among its variants, HDSL has the most to offer immediately, because of the stability it has gained through existing deployment in conjunction with T1.

DSL's potential has catalyzed interest among service providers. Alcatel says it has recently designed and installed equipment for Ameritech, BellSouth, Pacific Bell, Southwestern Bell, Singapore Telecom and Telia in Sweden; Paradyne claims to have more than 100 business partners.

Others jumping on the DSL bandwagon include Bell Atlantic and UUNET, which already offers services and plans to support more than 200 points of presence by year's end. Both GTE and MCI have promised to begin nationwide DSL rollouts in 1998.

Should businesses jump? Perhaps not just yet. The full potential of DSL won't be achievable until late 1998 or early 1999, when large-scale deployment is forecast. Standards, interoperability and economic hurdles must also be leveled for this still-nascent technology to live up to its potential. Now is the time, however, for businesses to pay close attention to DSL when building or buying platforms and applications.