Telcordia Technologies elevated the meaning of loop pre-qualification last week by teaming with broadband service provider Telocity to deploy its DSL Loop Qualification service.

The new service, announced as Sapphyre last June, performs physical diagnostics on a potential customer's line to determine the level of service, if any, that is available. Most pre-qualification solutions available today rely on database queries showing estimated mileage between customers and their serving central offices (COs).

"Sapphyre is a software platform run by the end user," said Bobbi Rentko, director of DSL loop qualification solutions at Telcordia. The Sapphyre name will be phased out over the next six months as part of Telcordia's realignment of product names.

The more descriptive DSL Loop Qualification service is more of a pre-qualification service, Rentko said. Customers can pre-qualify themselves through Telocity's Web site by supplying a participating service provider with their name, address and phone number to determine if DSL service is offered in their area.

Customers that qualify download Telcordia's loop qualification client software. When the customer runs the software, three long-distance calls are placed from the analog line that will be used for DSL to an 800-number that terminates on Telcordia's DSL Loop Qualification server in Morristown, N.J.

During those calls, the line is tested. "We look at signal-to-noise ratio, echo response and we take analog measurements and apply our patented algorithm to see how that line will perform in the higher frequencies," Rentko said. Details on specific line characteristics are proprietary and are part of Telcordia's patent, she added.

The software checks for the presence of load coils and verifies whether a digital loop carrier serves the line. Both instances can preclude the service provider's ability to offer DSL.

"They use an interesting technique to be able to do that," said Eric Andrews, vice president of marketing at Turnstone. "One of the challenges is that the test head is not actually connected to the local loop. They're doing some interpretive analysis inferring on a lot of different data points to determine what is likely to be the case [with the local loop]."

Though not Telcordia's direct competitor, Turnstone manufactures copper cross-connect equipment and develops software used in the CO by service providers to install and test DSL loops.

Despite the long-haul connection from the user through the local CO and across an interexchange carrier's facilities, Telcordia's software analyzes only the local loop.

"The long-distance network and interoffice trunking are all digital, so we don't even see that. We only look at the analog spectrum," Rentko said.

Once the line has been tested, the DSL Loop Qualification server sends a test-complete message to the potential customer and, if successful, advises the customer to call the DSL provider. The DSL provider, in this case Telocity, gets more detailed information about the line characteristics and stores the results in a database.

"The main piece of this solution is reporting the maximum achievable rate that that line can support," Rentko said.

Carriers often install a second copper pair to a customer requesting DSL service, making pre-qualification an inexact science, Andrews said. "The voice line that you currently have is not the line you're getting the DSL on," he said. "That is the case with every [competitive local exchange carrier] out there today. They are all doing second line data."

BellSouth sells DSL wholesale in most cases and only will run a second line if a facilities-based provider requests it and pays for it, a BellSouth spokesman said.

"The only alternative for [competitive carriers] to do loop qualification is to rely on [incumbent LECs] to provide information or use a mapping solution to determine distance from the CO. Our DSL Loop Qualification service is more accurate and cost effective," Rentko said.

"It's still a way to manage the expectations of the customer and it helps you streamline your efforts," Andrews said.

Telocity officials were unavailable for comment.