ZO, I would not bother with Clueless Clay and his inability to tell
the difference between Ascend's 25GB duck-switches and NN's monster
50/450Gb switch. However others certainly may be able to, especially
it they do DD.
Here is the usually insightful AAbelson in today's Barrons' editorial
reporting
interactive.wsj.com
Lucent Technologies, we're pleased to note, did not blame
Intel when it voiced to the world the melancholy disclosure
that its first fiscal quarter would be a bit of a bummer.
Investors took the bad news with commendable aplomb:
They dropped the stock more than 20 points, or nearly
29%, shaving a modest $63.7 billion from the company's
market value.
Lucent, once part of the Ma Bell family and still a monster
maker of telephone equipment, explained it had
underestimated demand. Rivals, notably Nortel Networks,
didn't exactly ease poor Lucent's discomfort by rushing to
gloat in public that they were doing just great.
Jaye Scholl, this magazine's crack West Coast editor, who,
among her other chores, keeps tabs on those curious
investment creatures known as hedge funds, reports that
among the tech-oriented hedge-fund crowd, there's also a
suspicion that Lucent's stock-in-trade phone equipment,
based on a high-margin but older "architecture," is being
eclipsed by newer offerings. So its problems could easily
go a mite deeper than just an inability to handle an
overabundance of business.
--------------------
I maintain that for those that have been following the
LU, MCI and NN events closely this is old news.
The NYTimes aired the dirty laundry about outdated equipment
at LU 5 months ago:
Clearly what we have here at LU, in essence, is that Lu is using
Ascend's outdated and old eqipment/ATM switches.
The engineers that developed the software are gone.
When problems occur computerworld.com
nobody knows how to fix it
and MCI took a blood bath. As a result of that, countless
Telcos are fleeing LU in mass.
LU is left with selling outdated ASND ATM switches to
local mom and pop ISPs who don't have to worry as
much about congestion and downtime because
they are too small for that to happen with any
significant frequency.
LU is too slow and behemothic to move as nimbly as NT did into
newer fast technology because their mentality is still that
of being a protected, slow -moving-in the market Bell Labs Company.
So now they got hit right where it counts, in their pocket.
You don't need a PhD to figure this out.
Just read the morning papers.
NN, still a fantastic buy at these prices
TA
--------------------------
NYTimes August 17, 1999
" An unusual airing of the long distance
industry dirty laundry "
nytimes.com
MCI Points Finger at Lucent for
Recent Network Woes
---------------------
Some excerpts:
Ebbers tried to shift ultimate
responsibility for the problem to Lucent, and Lucent --
which sells MCI Worldcom hundreds of millions of
dollars worth of products every year -- accepted it.
And from Thomas R. Donovan,
president of the Chicago Board of Trade,
a big MCI Worldcom customer,
wrote in a letter to Ebbers on Friday:
"As a result of MCI Worldcom's failure to
deliver on their promises to me early last week, the
C.B.O.T. is pursuing all available remedies. We have
lost all confidence in MCI Worldcom's ability to
provide reliable service."
Ebbers ......essentially disavowed responsibility,
saying
the problem was related to an upgrade of Lucent's
software.
" Lucent has acknowledged full responsibility."
He added: "Because we do not as a company -- and no one
else in the industry does either -- write software for
this type of switch and network, that it is not something
within our power, to determine the exact cause of the
problem."
Ebbers continues
"Part of the reason that there is some concern here is that
there has been a lot of consolidation in our industry
and this software was originally developed by
Cascade Communications, who was then acquired by
Ascend Communications, who has since been
acquired by Lucent," he said.
"And so one of the concerns obviously in this cycle of events
is what happened to the people and the process that did
the development and wrote the software. And was the
capability to maintain this software retained through
these transactions?"
That might sound somewhat obtuse, but for the
telecommunications industry those are very harsh
words. Communications carriers generally refuse to
discuss their vendors at all, yet Ebbers publicly
questioned whether Lucent, which spent $20 billion of
its stockholders' money to acquire Ascend earlier this
year, has been managing that deal correctly.
Lucent took the high road, accepting responsibility, as
indeed it should if its software was at fault.
==============================
Message #12452 from zbyslaw owczarczyk at Jan 8 2000 1:35PM
Clay Takaya 2. Ascend sales are up over 50% YoY which makes me think that NN is going to be hurting (again) at its next earnings
announcement.
Newbridge Networks Outlook Remains Positive: Business
Activity Levels Remain Strong and Momentum Continues
to Build
KANATA, Ontario--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 7, 2000--Newbridge Networks (NYSE:NN - news; TSE:NNC - news) today announced it is
pleased with its progress during the current quarter. The company is experiencing increasing demand, especially in North America.
biz.yahoo.com
current Q3 ends Januay 30, 2000
Zbyslaw |
