ISP Review takes a look at the latest modem standard to hit the streets

Availability & Practicality

Sadly v.92 is a well-defined standard sitting like the needle in a haystack to the market and manufacturers alike. The technology itself may be well perfected, yet actually using and implementing it is proving to be more of a problem. Most who once specialised in making modems have been busy pouring billions into broadband and general network technologies.

In short the existence of v.92 has been greatly overshadowed by the industry's rush to bring us faster broadband technologies and cheaper unmetered, which is a pity since modems remain the most popular way of connecting to the Internet even today.

The other problem is that while most v.90 modems are FLASH upgradeable (download the firmware and update to your hardware's memory), the v.44 compression standard requires a faster modem processing power. This is something most older modems lack and as such you'd most likely have to purchase a new v.92 modem from scratch, which is probably best anyway.

In summary, most seemed to have overlooked v.92 and don't have the time to bring out newer modems amongst more modern technologies, yet are also unable to update existing modem software due to technical limits. As such ISPs are not able to fully support the new standard and especially unmetered and broadband ISPs whom already run at a loss offering such services. There's no room for the cost of updating their modem racks.

Where The Land Lies

You can buy v.92 modems now from manufacturers such as Zoom and most stores like PCWorld will have external and internal (PCI) stock on-sale. They'll probably set you back between £40 and £60 depending on where you buy them and what make.

The good news is v.92 modems are backwards compatible with 33.6Kbps and 56Kbps (V.90) standards and so will work with all ISPs. The other good news is that the newer upstream communication speeds are also semi-functional with existing v.90 technologies. Meaning you will get better upstream communications than a standard v.90 (good for multiplayer), but not as good as if the ISP were to fully support v.92.

The bad news is that the new 'Quick Connection' method will give you strange connection speed readings and won't work as fast on dial-up, not to mention that the v.44 compression standard must be independently supported by the ISP (usually comes with the v.92 stuff anyway). In short, if you're in the market for a modem or love multiplayer then try v.92 (check for a flash upgrade first), if not then wait until UK ISPs start to support it.

We predict that by the end of 2001/earl 2002 v.92 will be more widely used among UK ISPs, however it'll probably be the summer before any start to adopt it. At present we have not seen any UK ISPs actively promoting the fact they have v.92, something they all did when v.90 was introduced.

If you know of any ISPs supporting v.92 then please inform us.

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