You will NEVER achieve a modem cost for your system that will be lower cost than what you can buy cheap commodity far east modem boards for PCs. From what I observe about the cost of FULL modem boards (Not Windows type modems where some modem functionality is implemented in Windows driver software) on ISA bus it is doubtful that even in 'respectable' quantities that you are going to get production cost below about $40 US. And do NOT forget the cost of type approving a modem to get its telcom certs. One company where I worked we built a dual modem board for a video conferencing system using the Connexant (a.k.a Rockwell) modem chip sets. The cost of type approving the modems for USA, CANADA, UK, FRANCE, and three other Eurpoean countries was well over $70K US.


So please consider how many of your systems that you will make before you discard the idea of using the "ready builts".

You know there is another attack you can take too. You could equip your product with an RS232 connector on the back of the box. (DB25 is best for this idea). Then you can consider a product offering to the customer whereby you offer systems with and without remote data/download access. For the system configuration with the remote access option you can build and sell a modem adapter that is a module that plugs right onto the DB25 connector. This module can easily be made with something like the Cermatek modem module. This concept works becasue most likely not all of your customers will use the remote access capabilty thus keeping the cost of an internal modem out of those systems. Those that do need it can purchase it as an option or an upgrade. The nature of upgrades in the sales side of things generally allows for higher pricing marginon these parts.

Michael Karas