David, I think it has something to do with the architecture of the network. Meshed versus Distributive???? Does that help?
I received the IPO prospectus this afternoon. As of Mar/99 ISLD had 62 customers with CISCO, Autodesk, E-trade, NSM, Novell, Mastercard International, Diamond Multimedia and Platinum Technology being their largest clients>>> each representing greater than 3% of the revenue.
They highlight as their "main" competition >> Exodus and Business units of Frontier/Global Center. A few others were mentioned to a lesser degree ie: Abovenet,etc. INIT or Interliant was not on the list>>Which doesn't necessarily mean anything.
ISLD does not have traditional peering relationships. The network service providers carry the Internet traffic of their customers without any reciprocal transit agreements. While ISLD pays a fee to the providers for this arrangement, it gives them access to thousands of Internet service providers without the obligation of carrying traffic originating outside of their network. (I don't know how Exodus and others do this.)
ISLD leases lines or bandwidth from multiple telecom carriers ie: MCI/Worldcom, GTE, SPRINT etc, etc. From what I can tell, this is how the competitors operate as well.
The barrier to entry in this market is minimal, so getting to market first is key....Exodus is there and the blue chip??? They do have some key clients. I wonder if companies like CISCO work with more than one private network company? Just a thought....
Still reading the prospectus, if I find anything else interesting, I'll post.
LJM |
