The MAX MetaPOP will be a multi-vendor environment designed by Bell Atlantic and GTE using equipment from Cisco Systems, FORE Systems, IBM and Virginia's Center for Innovative Technology. US West will begin offering its MegaBit Services ADSL in more than 20 cities this month, including Denver, Phoenix and Salt Lake City, where service is now available in some locations. Dell is the first major PC vendor to offer ADSL-ready PCs. Both offer adaptive data-transfer rates from 192 Kbps to 7 Mbps downstream, up to 1 Mbps upstream and were developed by NetSpeed Inc., which Cisco acquired last month. Trial products are being tested by Bell Labs.
General availability is forecast for the end of the year.
The product translates voice packets into data packets and is Cabletron's first VoIP offering.