Sam,
Cramer is not dead wrong, he is just pulling an Al Gore and changing his mind, literally within an hour's time. Look at his stuff from earlier this week--he went from "Optical is dead due to CapEx slowing" to "I Think a bottom is here" to "Optical Bubble has burst" literally within 90 minutes.
He has become a parody, which is too bad because he is a talented writer...
Lost in all of this, I remember a year or two back when WCOM bought MCI, bears were saying how the new WCOM network was so old that the company would be buried when the new fiber-based networks went in, and they had to compete with that on the archairc copper-based networks they would have to pay to maintain and upgrade. Well, it looks like that is exactly what has happened to T and WCOM. My new question is, why would Capex spending slowdowns affect optical so heavily, when the big telcos are now hurting because of the SONET issues?
I just don't see the logic in such a dramtic slowdown with these types of companies. If what I have been gleaming lately is true, that optical networking has extremely quick payback times, and that installation constraints are what is holding folks like NT back, I would think resource investment into fixing installation bottlenecks would allow these companies to realize the tremendous cost savings and ability to better compete in the market by going with optical systems.
But then again, maybe I am too simple for this type of thinking...
G |
