3Com Class Action Suit

Petit-Monsieur Pas-de-Cou writes "3Com Corporation has been sued in California by an alleged nationwide class, asserting claims relating to the advertising of modems using 3Com's x2 modem technology. Among other claims, plaintiffs in these lawsuits have alleged that 3Com engaged in deceptive advertising by claiming that modems employing x2 technology could achieve 56K speeds and/or were twice as fast as prior generation modems. " Wow-that's a lotta legal statements.

Re:56k is a nasty hack

Well, ISDN is still a pretty expensive solution for not that much more bandwith, and it is a hassle to install and have to go through the phone company to install it. Compared to satellite, ADSL, cable etc ISDN isn't anything to brag about. And cmon, IDE isn't that bad. I certainly don't mind being able to add 17 gigs for less then 250. So what if it isn't the fastest for the "mission critical" apps. I am using it for data storage, and it doesn't have to blaze along. With the new IBM deskstars and other drives, they seem to be competing with scsi on storage space and sometimes speed.

As to the 56k issue, it really isn't that bad. It depends entirely on where you live, and you don't have to limit the connect always. Where I am my 56 k does fluctuate, and only sometimes receives the connect. But at a relatives they received 52000 connect every single time. It may not be the wonder it was always advertised, but as always there is a caveat. In the advertisements and brochures the fine print was there...telling people it may not work where they lived. So I don't think 3com will necessarily lose the lawsuit.

Re:56k is a nasty hack

I'll agree that 56k is a nasty hack. The problem is it had to be done. The reason it exists at all is that the local phone apparently are determined not to be dragged into the 21st century, and intend to claw the ground kicking and screaming all the way.

ISDN? In order for me to get the same deal I have now but at ISDN speeds (single channel), I would have to pay $575 a month! I do not HAVE $575 a month to spend on internet access. Without 56k modems (connecting at 41-44k), I would be at 26.4k, not ISDN. In fact, at $575/month, I could run Gigabit fiber from home to work and break even in 29 months (If I were allowed access to utility poles and conduits). As for DSL, I am promised it will be available in my area EVENTUALLY. I live in a metro area BTW.

The entire history of modems has been an end run around telcos that haven't improved in any substantial way since the mid '70s (and that was a small improvement on a system that itself hadn't changed since the '50s). If you think about it, the whole idea of analog encoding of a digital signal looks kludgy in itself. The only reason it was done was because analog circuits were widely available (POTS) and digital circuits were nowhere in sight.

As far as the class action suit goes, I don't think there was deliberate deception. I was completely unsurprised to see that 44k was the best I could get. What it amounts to is that modems are now being bought by a different class of consumers. When modem sales were restricted to people who understood computers, the probability that the modem wouldn't reach it's top speed went without saying. Apparently, it's going to have to be said now. (Warning, do not eat this modem. May cause injury if used as a frisbee, Consult your physician before using any electronic device....)

Lawyer: more class action sillines

Disclaimer: I am a lawyer, but this is not legal advice. If you need advice on this matter for yourself, see an attorney licensed in your jurisdiction.

This is a fairly typical class-action settlement.

The underlying claim will strike most people familiar with the issue as silly. In all seriousness, how many people in the US took a 56k for the exact speed of 7kBytes/second? 3? 5? They diddn't buy it for a particular data rate, but for being the fastest available.

And the defense: This looks like one more that the defense would win after fighting. BUt it comes down to:

The settlement: coupons, and pay off the plaintiff lawyers. Coupons are becoming an increasingly common way of handling nuisance class action suits. There have been rumors in the past of manufacture trying to rummage up suits for this very purpose. It either locks in the consumer to buy from the same manufacturor, or it doesn't cost anything.

That is, it doesn't directly cost anything. Switching hats briefly, and speaking as an economist, this drives up prices by distorting the demand for the product. Class members pay less than they otherwise would have, but everyone else pays more. As a corrollary, the net settlement ot the consumer is less than $15, as the $15 relates to the new higher price.

Since they could win, why does the manufacturor settle? Quite simply, it's cheaper. Instead of the legal costs of fie years of litigation, the depression of the stock price from having to report the litigation in reports, and the general effects of "consumer advocates" screaming, the company cuts a bunch of coupons, and pays hush money to the plaintiff lawyers. (MY civil procedure professor referred to these suits as a great way to get paid just for going away).

The reason that class action suits exist is the notion that they are an effective way of handling suits that are too small to bring individually, and that they cut down on the required judicial resources--it's not worth suing a major corporation ofer $100.

On the other hand, when the damage per consumer is less than forty cents, it makes no sense to worry about the matter. So the system gives them a ten cent coupon, and their lawyers a couple of million.

The only class action that I know of that has actually benefitted people who were actually injured was the Iomega settlement, in which Iomega paid rebates that it had wrongfully withheld--and in full (plus a disk). TYpically, the payment to class members is negligible, or the connection to the alleged injury spurious (e.g., the breast implant litigation).

In practice, iomega excepted, the only beneficiaries of the class action system are the attorneys who feed from it.

Re:9600 *is* the maximum transfer rate for modems

It's either 2400 or 9600, but I believe it's 2400.

older modems (not oldest, they used discrete frequencies) used both phase angle and amplitude to encode bits to send to the other side. 9600 baud was really 2400 baud, but it sent four bits at a time. Imagine it like the old crappy parallel port cables which could do 4 bit transfers.

as modems get faster and faster, they still stick with this 2400 baud (a signalling rate) but pack more and more bits ber baud. What you end up with is what's called a constellation pattern. a 000 is sent as a 3/4 power 24 degree signal, a 010 as a 1/8 power 0 degree signal... picture a grid that's 8x8. x is your phase, y is your amplitude. whereever the lines cross, there's a possible signal.

I'm a little dozy here after lunch but I'm pretty sure that's how the terms are used. baud is the signalling rate, and bps is the signalling rate times the number of bits sent per signal.

now there is a limit as to how "fine" this grid can get. ideally you'd want infinite changes in both phase and amplitude, but you're not gonna get it. On connect, modems do all kinds of fancy frequency and amplitude sweeps and basically "shape" the channel they're in so that they can then use adaptive equilization to flatten out the frequency spectrum and get optimal communications. I think that 8-QAM is the best you can get right now.

BTW, IANACE (communications engineer)

Re:Deceptive advertising on box re: power limit

The power restriction is there to minimize crosstalk between the various different lines between the CO and the end user (i.e. where it's still straight analog twisted pair wires bundled up together). Push to much power through, and people will end up hearing your modem hiss at the ISP underneath their call.

Re:56k is a nasty hack

Well, ISDN is still a pretty expensive solution

Because it isn't mainstream. Also because of regulatory issues in the USA, as I understand it.

or not that much more bandwith

It's not so much the bandwidth, as the low latency, fast connects and total reliability

IDE isn't that bad. I certainly don't mind being able to add 17 gigs for less then 250.

But if IDE didn't exist you would be able to add 17 gigs of SCSI for less than 250. There's nothing inherently more expensive about SCSI, it's just that the existence of two incompatible standards has enabled the disk manufacturers to overcharge the high-enders, knowing they don't have the option of going to EIDE because limited cable lengths and the low maximum number of units would make it unusable. And the max cable lengths on EIDE are much shorter [deja.com] than people think. That's apart from all the other issues [sunsite.auc.dk] people have because IDE keeps running out of bits every other year.

56k is a nasty hack

We would have been better off if 56k and EIDE had never been invented. Then everyone would have gone to ISDN and SCSI after IDE and normal modems ran out of steam.

When I read how 56k was supposed to work, I thought it the most gross hack imaginable, and it seems it is. Almost everyone has to limit the top speed in order to stop it flaking out, dropping the connection at random moments and generally being a piece of analogue technology pushed far too far.

Apparently one of the best places to put a 56k modem is on the analogue port of an ISDN adapter. That way the analogue signal has the shortest distance to travel.

Re:Blame it on Shannon

Let me clarify on point 2 a bit. Analog phone lines (commonly called POTS, or Plain Old Telephone Service) have a frequency response (if I remember this correctly) of about 40 Hz to about 4000 Hz. This means that *all* of the equipment between one phone in your home and the phone that you are calling in someone else's home, has to handle that frequency response (or a reasonable approximation to it). The telephone switches are capable of sampling that frequency response, digitizing it, switching it, trunking it, etc.

ISDN is a bit different...its a digital connection to the home, so the terminal adaptor or ISDN router is responsible for digitizing the data...and for analog signals on the back of your TA, it does it in much the same way that the telco switches do for the analog line above...for a data connection...well, the data is already digital from the computer, so its just a matter of encoding it for the line protocol that ISDN uses...thus it soak up the full 64Kbps channel available to it. In the telco switches, its just a matter of taking that already encoded data and switching it...this is fairly trivial since you're already dealing with digital data, its just a matter of taking it off of one line and throwing it on another (well...there's more to it than that in implementation of course, but the basic idea is simple). However, because the telco network was set up with 64Kbps (sometimes just 56Kbps) channels for transmission of the digitized audio data, ISDN limits at 64Kbps as well...this is a direct result of the analog connections in the first point. The whole telephone system was set up to handle 64Kbps chunks, so that's what ISDN gets, since its transmitted across largely the same telco infrastructure.

xDSL is a whole different beast entirely. As I figure most of you are aware, the physical copper wires that are run into your house (business, whatever) are physically capable of handling a much greater bandwidth response than the telco's are making use of (*this* is where Shannon's limit really comes in). So, xDSL uses frequency responses that the telephone network has never made use of before (4000Hz up to some really bignum Hz). However, because the telco infrastructure isn't designed to handle these frequency responses (and bandwidth quantities!) the switches and trunks and other telco stuff can't handle DSL directly... Here's where the really big limitation with DSL really is...the DSL equipment has to be on the copper line *before* it hits the switch, or, if the signal goes through the switch, it gets clipped back to the 40-4000Hz signal that the switches are designed to handle. So, your DSL equipment has to be at the telco Central Office (a considerable expense for non-telco's to co-locate equipment), your phone line (actual copper wire) has to be rewired to hit the DSL equipment and then split off from there into the switch, and because the switches can't handle the frequency response (and bandwidth) it can't be "switched" meaning you can't place calls on DSL...really...in the telco world, this seriously limits the usefulness of DSL. Even in the ISP world its somewhat limiting...if you are using one ISP for your DSL, you can't hang up and dial another DSL provider...you'd have to have a completely seperate DSL line in from that second provider to use that...kinda sucks.

Don't get me wrong...DSL is really cool...but there are some serious limitations.

To get back on topic a bit :/ 3Com's modems do x2/v.90 quite well actually...please remember the adoption phase of v.34...it progressed at about the same speed...particularly with new modems, this stuff is done really in software (DSP's running software that perform the modem functionality)...particularly for central site modem equipment (with 3Com HiPer DSP's for example, they use a single PPC chip to be 24 modems, plus other functionality)...and we're still basically dealing with version 1.0 of this v.90 modem software, well, maybe we're at version 1.1 at this point...compatibility is getting better.

Oh, another point...before you go off and complaining to your ISP about your v.90 connect speeds, the critical side of a v.90 connect is the client side modem...ie, the one attached to your computer, not theirs. For example, if you have a Lucent WinModem, you better make *darn* sure you have at least version 5.32 of the code on your modem before you start calling up and complaining to your ISP or you're going to be sending them some sheepish apologies eventually. There are other code revisions that help with other types of modems...a good resourse is http://www.56k.com for finding this information.

Sorry so long. :)

Jeff

Re:Blame it on Shannon

1st off, the word modem has gone from being a technical abbreviaton of "modulate-demodulate", to a generic marteking term that means "the box you use to connect your computer to the internet". So that's the first thing to understand.

2nd, with all digital technologies like xDSL, and ISDN, you get much higher data rates because you never have to convert the signal. POTS, ISDN and xDSL all use the same 2 wires, but with various encoding methods, and consequentially different equipment both at your end, and at the telco end. The biggest reason why DSL is so much faster than ISDN is because the xDSL spec has shorter distance limits that ISDN does. It's pretty similar to the distance restrictions of Gigabit/Fast/Ethernet.

The reason that you hear lots of people complain abot the FCC and 56K, is not that they want to restrict bandwidth, but that they have a limit on how much power you can send across phone lines. Because of this restriction, the tricks that the 56K modems use to get above 33.6 can't be maximized on "crystal clear" phone lines. You'ld be hard pressed to find a line where it mattered anyway, but that's another issue.

56K modems are a pretty neat trick, and most people I know do have 56K. I decided about two years ago to just hold out for one of the current multi-migabit technologies. I'd spent too much already on 14.4, 28.8 and 33.6 to spend a dime on any new modem. I pondered ISDN for a while, but it is _so_ much money. I just can't justify that monthly bill.

here ends the lesson...
-earl

Plain English

This is all actually kindof funny. According to the not-quite-finalized agreement, if you bought a modem that's in the set in question, then you are entitled to a "$15 Rebate Coupon." Not $15, mind you. A $15 coupon that's good only for purchasing more 3Com products. If it didn't have the phrase "Class-Action Suit" attached, I'd think it was just another promotional campaign.

The Death of Meaningful Specs

All that has happened is that modems have joined hard drives, monitors, and especially printers by competing on performance specs that are only meaningful in advertising lingo, not the real world.

In days past, if you bought a 300 bps modem, you would expect nothing less than 300. This probably held true up to about 9600 bps, then, gradually, we got used to not connecting at full speeds. It's funny now that the happy posters in this topic are happy at 45K, not 56K or even 53K. Nobody would have been happy with 220 bps from their 300 bps modem.

But modem's aren't special; they're just following the trend. Show me a printer which will really live up to its pages-per-minute spec. In fact, show me an old dot matrix printer that got anywhere near its characters per second spec. Show me a monitor that's actually sold based on its viewable screen area. (Actual viewable area is only a footnote now, and only because of another one of these class action suits.) And I'd take any hard drive or CD-ROM drive claims with a huge grain of salt, too.

As consumers, all we can do is become informed. I don't expect the manufacturers to start selling 17.9" monitors -- they'd be afraid of being excluded from a PC Rag's roundup of 300 19" monitors. But maybe we can insist on more realistic reporting. It just might be possible now that there are lots of web sites reviewing hardware and basically making PC Rags obsolete.

My own phone switch

I have my own phone switch, and a pile of different modems for testing, and various access servers for terminating the 56k end.

We use it to prove that different modems only connect at far less than the 53.3k even under the most ideal conditions. We measure the length of the local loop in inches :-) (actually, we use our poor little switch for purposes that would be illegal and dangerous on any publicly connected switch, but thats another post)

But USR modems are no worse than any of the others, even at ideal conditions. Sometimes they hit the theoretical 53.3 max, sometimes they don't.

Me thinks this to be a lawsuit against all the advertising and slimy sales promotions USR is known for. Certainly their technology is about the same as all their competition.