Creative Moves Into Broadband With PCI and USB DSL Products

Creative Technology is getting into broadband. The company announced plans for a family of internet access products: internal PCI cards built on Lucent’s WildWire DSP1690 chip set for OEMs, system integrators, and retail, plus an external USB model built on Centillium’s Optimizer chip set that Creative says will be first of its kind to market, aimed squarely at home users. Both promise download speeds up to 1.5Mbps, which Creative pegs at up to 26 times the bandwidth of a 56K modem.

The products start shipping through Creative’s retail and channel partners in Q3 of this year. The company is pitching them at streaming audio and video, music downloads, internet radio, video conferencing, broadcast video, and network gaming. Research firm Dataquest figures 7.4 million broadband modems will be sold by 2000, so Creative is hardly out on a limb here, but for those of us fragging at 200 ping on a 56K line, every new entry in this market is welcome.