Tim, thanks for a 'contrary view' link to the ION/Fastbreak announcement. Jeff Vayda was making the same point with respect to human/corporate inertia slowing the pace at which new technology, no matter its technical superiority, does in fact get adopted in the real world. I certainly agree with Jeff, and understand that Sprint will have a missionary sale which usually translates to long sales cycle on their hands.
Still, it's a little funky to knock the telcos for being techno dinosaurs, and watch Bill Gates and Andy Grove rip 'em for not delivering the bandwidth necessary to get the net off the ground and really rocking and rolling, and then to sit back when one of them bolts out of the box with a technology that sounds pretty damned snazzy and say "well golly, that's gonna be difficult to execute on". I'm not really picking a fight here cuz this ain't my turf, and I do believe in my black little heart of hearts that 90% of tech announcements are, in the infamous words of Gregg Powers, "cow poo-poo"[TM] so I take Jeff's point. Still, the world's digital/packet, Sprint's layed a ton of fiber and is arguably miles ahead of Mother Bell in preparing for the future. I also think this announcement is very significant because it's a blaring headline that says that CSCO is in the telecom equipment supply business. Everybody's been predicting the convergence of computers and telecom since IBM bought ROLM a couple of thousand years ago. A little early it seems, but the time sure as hell seems to be now. Mike Doyle |
