Motorola Inc’s Semiconductor Products division and Alcatel Alsthom SA’s Microelectronics unit yesterday announced an alliance to develop integrated circuit solutions that the two claim will allow companies to bring products to market faster while reducing costs at the same time. The partnership centers around the development of CODECS (coder/decoder) and SLICS (subscriber line interface). CODECS are chipsets that enable digital devices, such as a digital telephone handset, to interface with standard analog phone lines, while SLICs act as the high voltage interconnect and sit on the analog phone line and enable it to communicate with the digital device. At present, Motorola only makes single-channel CODECs, which enable the incoming analog phone line to connect to one internal digital device only, according to Michael Chadock, the company’s director of telephony operations.
As a result of the partnership, Motorola will get its hands on Alcatel’s dual channel CODEC, which enables two analog lines to be combined and interfaced to the same digital device. So instead of just connecting a standalone digital phone, users can interface to a multifunction device, such as a feature-phone which includes a digital phone and modem in one. At first, Motorola will OEM Alcatel’s dual channel product but Chadock said the two plan to work together to develop products in CODECs and SLICs for Plain Old Telephone Service (POTS) applications. The first to come from the alliance will be a dual-channel POTS chipset. It will be targeted at communication applications including CPE terminal equipment, SOHO routers, ISDN network termination devices, digital loop carriers and so on. The device will enable developers to make one basic product for all countries without having to change circuit components to match local requirements, the companies said. It will be available for samples in the second quarter with production in the third quarter. Chadock said neither Motorola nor Alcatel had invested in the partnership but that there were continuing discussions about taking the alliance to the next level.
