17.4 DSL Forum

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The DSL Forum is an international association of more than 350 companies (as of 2001) covering telecommunications, equipment, computing, networking, and service provider companies. Established in 1994, the Forum continues its drive for a mass market for DSL and delivers the benefits of this technology to end users around the world over existing copper telephone wire infrastructures .

Throughout its eight years , the DSL Forum has worked on defining the core technology as it develops, providing inputs to international standards bodies and establishing processes to deliver maximum effectiveness in the deployment and use of DSL. The Forum is focused on the complete portfolio of DSL technologies designed to deliver ubiquitous broadband services for a wide range of situations and applications that will continue the transformation of our day-to-day lives in an on-line world.

Best practices for autoconfiguration, flow through provisioning, and a range of other key facilitators of scaleable, global, mass-market deployment of DSL technology are fast-tracked by DSL Forum through its technical and marketing committees . This work takes place at quarterly, weeklong meetings and through continuous working group progress programs with formal technical reports developed from contributions and "Working Texts."

Technical Working Groups	Marketing Working Groups
Architecture and Transport	Ambassador Program
Autoconfiguration	Deployment Council
Emerging DSLs Study Group	Mindshare
Operations and Network Management	Summit and Best Practices
Testing and Interoperability	Tradeshows
VoDSL	Public Relations
	Web
	E-commerce

Further information on the DSL Forum, its work, members , and meeting schedule is available on www.dslforum.org. The DSL Forum's Web site dedicated to providing information to end-users is on www.dsllife.com. The DSL Forum offices are at 39355 California St. Suite 307, Fremont, CA 94538, phone: [phone].

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