Full details have emerged of US Robotics Inc’s new modem, claimed to be the first to support AT&T Corp’s V.32terbo, Rockwell International Corp’s V.FC, and the forthcoming International Telecommunications Union ITU-T standard for 28.8Kbps, V.34. The Skokie, Illinois-headquartered company first announced the offerings in March. The new addition to its Courier modem range, the Courier Dual Standard Fax, will be upgradable to V.34 via a free Flash memory chip upgrade as soon as the standard is ratified, says the company. According to a company spokesman, US Robotics is supporting V.FC, despite the imminent arrival of V.34, because it is important to help customers to increase throughput as the final pieces of the V.34 standard are put in place. Ratification of V.34 is expected either this June or in the last quarter of the year, depending on the optimism of the source making the forecast. The modem is said to support US Robotics’s proprietary 16.8Kbps HST protocol – with an HST cellular function at 19.2Kbps – and V.17, the ITU-T facsimile protocol for sending messages at 14.4Kbps. It also offers backwards compatibility with V.32bis, V.32 and other standard modem protocols, says the company. According to US Robotics, additional features include dial security with 10 dial-back numbers, prompting passwords and encoded passwords; the company’s proprietary Adaptive Speed Levelling function, said to increase throughput on Courier-to-Courier connections; remote configuration; V.25bis for synchronous environments; and provision of V.42 and V.42bis error control and data compression capability. The new product is available this month in an external version, with an internal personal computer board version to follow. It lists for $800. Also announced was the WorldPort Dual Standard Cellular Fax. On the data side, this is a V.32terbo modem with a throughput of 19.2Kbps which the company claims can be boosted to 21.6Kbps by US Robotics’ Adaptive Speed Levelling protocol. On the cellular side, US Robotics claims that, by using Cellular HST, the modem has a retrain time of 200mS as opposed to the 15 seconds taken by cellular V.32bis with MNP 10. Available sometime this summer, it will list for $545. Finally, the company also revealed an entry-level 9.6Kbps fax/2.4Kbps data modem, the WorldPort 2496, costing $200.
