well, i guess we will see...but for now its fluff
and BTW why dont u call IR depts or anyone in the alliance partner organizations and see whether they plan to order a bunch...and if earnings is sometimes further down the road because of infrastructure then NUKO will go down further (u know that stock is valued as a discount of future cashflows to shareholders--the further the CFs the lower the value)...not everyone is a hold til u drop investor...u can buy back a stock later!...objectivity is important in balancing positive and negative sentiments... also earnings quality is a factor of conservative earnings accounting!
now lets end this unless u find something different than i have from alliance organizations (the only thing that counts)
here is something from my records:
Standards help market grow -- Video for the masses? Not yet
By Lane Cooper
Will videoconferencing ever come of age, shedding its niche status in
favor of wide market acceptance?
The short-term answer seems to be "no," though recent standards efforts by
the International Telecommunications Union and equipment and network
services providers are resulting in incremental progress.
Much of the success so far in shuttling live or still video images over
the public network has been confined to a few vertical applications.
These applications are found mostly in the legal system, where courts
conduct video arraignments of criminals; health care, where telemedicine
applications link doctors in geographically disparate regions; distance
learning, where students can participate in a class at a faraway school;
and the corporate market, which is particularly useful for companies that
have a worldwide presence and find regular travel cost-prohibitive.
One of the most formidable and least-discussed problems with live
videoconferencing is how to get participants to accept the value of
face-to-face meetings. This behavioral change likely will take years, as
video technology trickles into the market .
The recent definition and approval of key standards should aid this
process because equipment manufacturers will be able to provide
interoperable systems, presumably at a lower price than those available
through existing technology. These developments also are pushing video to
the desktop.
The overall result, say analysts at Mountain View, Calif.-based Frost &
Sullivan, has been significant improvements in video systems during the
past 18 months. In turn, these improvements have prompted projections of a
"boom" in sales of videoconferencing systems-from $740 million in 1996 to
$7 billion by 2002.
One of the primary technical challenges of video distribution has always
been bandwidth. The problem? Video is a bandwidth hog.
When standard analog NTSC video (the U.S. standard for TV) is digitized,
for instance, it requires more than 1 gigabyte of storage space for each
minute of transmission at 30 frames per second. So, one of the first
things that must be done to effectively and efficiently push video through
the telecommunications infrastructure is compression.
This is where technology like that provided by Nuko Information Systems
Inc. of San Jose, Calif., comes into play. Nuko produces codec systems
that take analog signals and digitize and compress them for distribution
over phone lines, Sonet rings or high-speed ATM networks.
On the receiving end, a codec system decompresses, then decodes the
digital signals for delivery to homes, businesses or other destinations.
Compression of this sort lets Nuko pack up to nine analog video channels
and multiplex them onto a single ATM stream, said Nabil Damouny, vice
president of networking systems for Nuko. The result, he said, is fast,
crisp video at a reasonable price.
"Faster transmission reduces network jitter," Mr. Damouny said, referring
to the fact that delays between video transmission and reception produce
screens that do not look like real-time video. "So using ATM and other
high-bandwidth channels becomes increasingly important."
An example of video transmission that capitalizes on these new compression
technologies is cable-television "supertrunking," where a service provider
transports multiple channels of video for a cable television provider over
a leased fiber-optic line. Mr. Damouny said that supertrunking may be the
answer to the disappointing technical performance of Bell company attempts
to roll out video on demand to homes.
Servers make progress
Significant advances have also occurred in the technology deployed in
video servers. Video servers have profited from improvements in speed,
processing power and compression.
Video servers that connect several participants in a videoconference have
begun featuring new capabilities that improve the look and feel of
videoconferences. These advances include things such as "continuous
presence" and "collaboration" technologies.
Continuous presence refers to a server's ability to accept audio and video
channels from multiple conferees. These are mixed and redirected so that
everyone can be heard and seen simultaneously via a video screen divided
into quadrants that accommodate up to five participants.
Steve Nill, chief financial officer of Burlington, Mass.-based VideoServer
Inc., said technologies such as continuous presence are helping to bring
about large-scale acceptance of videoconferencing in businesses. "Before
this, you could only see one person at a time and/or hear what that person
had to say," Mr. Nill said.
Mr. Nill called continuous presence technology a "major advance"and said
that two of VideoServer's current server clients-British
Telecommunications plc and Southwestern Bell-are rolling out 60 to 70
percent of all videoconferences in continuous-presence mode.
The the growth of the videoconferencing market, however, will depend on
the pricing models that telephone companies develop.
Current prices of up to $1 per minute per endpoint will not last long, Mr.
Nill predicted, particularly as the technology improves and more servers
are put online by moreand different types of companies.
And as computer companies such as Intel Corp. and Compaq Computer Corp.
are entering the desktop video market,service providers are eyeing video
to see which services will be ideal and at which prices.
"In 1998 you'll start seeing more video based on ATM," said Jack Gelmand,
marketing manager for media industries at AT&T in Bedminster, N.J. "On the
access side, I think ISDN will play a big role."
Lane Cooper is a free-lance writer in Washington D.C. E-mail your
reactions to this article to telepath@cmp.com. |
