The International Telecommunications Union
Wednesday moved to embrace a new standard for 56k connections to the Internet.
Some of the enhancements that come with the v.92 chipset include faster data rates, higher maximum connection
speeds, and significantly faster start-up times on recognized connections. Improvements to the v.90 standard were prompted by the ever-increasing
demand for faster access to the Internet for from residential consumers.
Pierre-Andre Probst, ITU working party co-chairman, said digital subscriber
line access is growing, but home users with no access to the high-speed technology are demanding enhancements as well.
“Much attention is going to DSL technologies these days, but the voiceband
modem will remain the pre-dominant worldwide access technology for many
years to come,” Probst said.
The software upgrade addresses demands from users of voice-enabled modems to notify them when someone is attempting an incoming call over the same line they use for Internet access. After an incoming phone call has been terminated, users can readily return
to re-establish an Internet connection.
However, the group’s recommendations won’t be made real until modem makers complete the software upgrade rollouts and Internet providers upgrade their terminal servers.
The ITU also made recommendations to improve data compression. The v.44
standard compresses more than 25 percent more data than the existing
technology used in v.42bis. The result, the ITU said, is throughput rates
consistently surpass more than 300 kilobits per second.
