From Edupage:
REPLACEMENT FOR CLIPPER AT&T and VLSI Technology Inc. will collaborate to develop microchips that use a triple-strength version of DES (data encryption standard), which previously had been rejected by the National Security Agency. VLSI is the designated contractor to make the government-favored Clipper chips, but this latest announcement reveals their doubts over whether there's a market for the Clipper. "These companies have basically made the determination that Clipper is dead and there's going to be the proliferation of encryption anyway, so they might as well take advantage of it," says one observer, who predicts the market for such technology "could reach hundreds of millions" of dollars in annual sales by the end of the decade. (Wall Street Journal 1/31/95 A3)
So, the question is, are these chips escrowed like Clipper (ie, are they abandoning the standard because the phones are awful)? Or are they abandon- ing the escrowed encryption altogether?