ICL may have stolen a march on its competitors with its One Per Desk (issue 88), but it is unlikely to have the field to itself for long.

The first UK threat to ICL will come in the shape of Acorn's promised Communicator.

According to managing director Chris Curry, its offering will undercut the price of the OPD with a price somewhere between £500 and £800. It will be based on a 16-bit processor, probably an 8086.

Unlike other manufacturers, Acorn is doing all the development work in-house, although there is believed to be a heavy British Telecom interest in the product.

Work is well advanced on the Communicator and those who have seen it are enthusiastic about its chances.

Unlike other Acorn products, the Communicator is not based on either the BBC board or the Electron.

From the other side of the Atlantic comes news that both IBM and AT&T are planning products.

The IBM offering is called the Cedar and was originally designed by Rolm, a telecommunications company. IBM was so impressed with the product it bought the company.

AT&T is also buying in a design from outside. Its PC7300 comes from Convergent Technologies, the West Coast company that produces a range of personal computers that in variably appear with other people's labels on.

Since both these American machines combine the power of a personal computer with the communications facilities of an intelligent telephone they will cost considerably more than ICL's OPD.

All these OPD competitors are due to appear in the UK during the course of the year.

Acorn, having leaked the Communicator's existence, has now returned to its traditional reluctance to discuss future products. The best guess of its launch date is sometime during the summer.

Regardless of who makes it first, it would seem that ICL has around a six month lead.