Continuing growth in the numbers of people telecommuting from home will lead to a big increase in the take-up of DSL (digital subscriber line) services, according to Intel corporate vice-president Mr Tom Franz.

Mr Franz is general manager of the Intel Network Processing Group (NPG), which has opened a research and development centre in Shannon, its first to be located outside the US.

Called Basis Communications Europe Ltd, the R&D centre has its genesis in Basis Communications, a Californian network semiconductor company that set up in Shannon a year ago and has since been bought by Intel.

The Shannon centre is specialising in broadband access technologies, including DSL. Its particular interest is in developing devices to be installed in the premises of small to medium size businesses and in homes.

"DSL will hit in those places where the current infrastructure is poor, as the mobile phone does, and also where the infrastructure is friendly to it," Mr Franz told The Irish Times.

DSL can wrest broadband speeds out of the ordinary telephone line that brings voice services to homes and businesses worldwide. The technology is frequently referred to as "xDSL", because of its alphabet soup of variations.

For decades, telephone lines into premises and homes have consisted of a pair of copper wires twisted around one another. Only a small portion of the available frequency range is needed to carry voice. DSL technology separates the rest of the frequency for high-speed use.

While DSL is fairly simple to install in the user's premises, it requires modification to the nearest telephone exchange.

Added to this, the quality is distance-dependent, so there is an upper limit of around three or four miles on the distance the subscriber can be from that modified exchange. This means that people in urban centres will be the first to benefit.

ADSL, where A stands for "asymmetry", has been used in the US for some time. It is only now starting to become generally available in the UK, and is undergoing trials in Ireland.

The inclusion of asymmetry in the title refers to the fact that this version takes in data much faster than it sends it out. As such, it is suitable for users who want to download large files, video and so on from the Internet, but are not themselves uploading much.

The first product from the Shannon centre will be brought to market in November, and this will be a symmetric version called HDSL2, a high bit-rate DSL. At the R&D centre opening, the HDSL2 was demonstrated using two personal computers and an emulator for the 12,000 feet (just over two miles) that is the limit of efficiency of this DSL variation.

With a bit rate of 1.5 Mb/second in both directions, the video picture on both screens was clear and fast. Twenty-four voice channels can be hung on the one original line.

Because the speeds are the same in both directions, large files, streamed audio and video can go backwards and forwards.

This would be a big advantage for, say, development teams working from different locations.

"Symmetric DSL is more conducive to the conduct of business," commented Mr Franz. "I think that Europe will skip over ADSL and go fairly rapidly to symmetric DSL."

"DSL is clearly deploying most rapidly in the US, where the suppliers can't keep up with demand," he said. "Studies show that Europe lags one year to 18 months behind the US."

He attributes this to a reluctance among telecommunication companies to provide the service, but says that there is already a big demand for DSL.

Apart from the HDSL2 device to be launched in November, the Shannon centre is also working on other variants of DSL.

VDSL and G.SHDL, which offer full rate, bi-directional speeds of up to 8 Mb/second, will be released in six to nine months time, according to Mr Peter MacNamara, who manages the Shannon centre.

These faster technologies work over shorter distances from the local exchange than ADSL and HDSL2.

All the products to be developed in Shannon will fit within Intel's Internet Exchange architecture.

There are currently about 35 people working in the Shannon centre, and this is expected to grow to around 100. About half the researchers are silicon engineers and about half are software specialists.