<..even you have to admit that you have been a little too adamant about detailing the negatives...>
In fact, I would have to disagree.
As far as the negatives, I think the studies speak for themselves. As far as my entertaining their validity, and my cautionary words and tone, in the context of the discussion, I think they have offered a very reasonable balance. As far as my being "adamant" - how could I be any less adamant when, throughout MANY of these posts, I make clear when appropriate that these are simply "opinions", and further acknowledge that they might well be WRONG?
And considering that these "acknowledgements" have ONLY come from MY side of the discussion, to mischaracterize MY posts this way, itself seems blatant in one-sided bias.
<..cable penetration is only about 65 million homes, only 10% of those have HFC. i just dont see close to 20% of those using data service. now, 200-300k i can believe....>
Well, I remember reading about a fairly recent industry report where the cable industry itself estimated about 20% of their ~65MM cable-subscribed homes were passed by HFC, which translates to 13MM homes passed. Other articles (including the one bill c referenced) have estimates in the range of 11MM currently HFC passed. I would think therefore, somewhere in the 10MM (~15%) range is a reasonably conservative current estimate.
And applying a 50% growth rate (of the CURRENT subscribed cable plant) to homes passed puts HFC cable passing upwards of 50MM homes into 2001. By the end of 97, Time Warner alone expects to pass 4MM homes and expects to pass over 15MM homes within a couple of years.
Several different independent industry analyses have projections for cable modem *subscriptions* reaching a range of 7MM to 10MM by 2001-2002. If we currently have, say, 200K subscribers, and are considering the lowball projections of 7MM in 2002, we are looking at subscriber growth rates around 100%/year. The more optimistic of these projections would generate closer to 300% growth rates and would achieve projected penetration percentages of approx 25% by 2001.
Of course Forrester, Forward Concepts and In-Stat may all be wrong in their estimates. I personally don't feel that I know this terrain thoroughly or currently enough to substantively critique or disagree with these independent projections. I am therefore inclined to accept these numbers as ballpark.
<DES encryption is pretty much dead.>
Trey, not sure where you got THAT idea, but it's wrong - in both theory and in the market.
Every major security firm/technique - (eg., Raptor, Cylink, SDTI (owner of RSA and original co-owner of now public Diffie-Hellman algorithms), Unix/Linux based Kerberos and others in-between, all offer products which use variants of DES to encrypt their data.
Further, computation intensive RSA encryption is often used to encode the private keys of the DES encrypted message (through RSA's RC-4 and
RC-5 DES extensions). This is both fast and enables *significant* encryption security (actually, as does DES56 alone) Many VPNs use (or plan to use) this or a similar approach. In addition, RSA asics should be available soon, which will greatly eliminate speed bottlenecks to even realtime image processing (such as with functional brain imaging).
<..as for valuations, it is going to be valued on contracts, not early sales. in addition, the deal will be based on market perce[ption, etc.>
Value is in the eye of the beholder. If you are buying a stock (vs. a company), you are likely more interested in how the street values it. Many a value investor won't touch story stocks (ie., no positive warnings) due to the greater risks, and they consequently trade off that beta for smaller, more secure returns. Eventually, a story stock may approach it's earnings period, and variants of PEG are most often used as valuation methods.
Who knows how the street will value WSTL until positive earnings are clearer. With the delayed ADSL starts of 1997, as you point out hard dollar contracts will m\now likely guide many ADSL investors. My opinion (and we can simply agree to disagree here) is that telco demand, and therefore contracts, will continue to be slower than once expected.
<..in other words, mergers arent cheap and there is no way WSTL will go for less than 30....>
I'm curious who you see buying Westell at $30 (or at any other price)?
<8-9/share? come on steve!!!!!..>
Would you have believed 10 two months ago when in WSTL was in the 20s? So with the telcos dragging, no current CEO, still no 3 promised contracts (and only 4 more days in 97), no CG or C6X yet, and a weak and uncertain market, especially for technology, you don't see 8-9 as a possibility?
Good luck-
Steve |
