Hi DW,
This news is just a couple days old. Looks like not a chance of the FCC changing anything. Not sure what the Merrill guy is up to;
California Public Utilities Commission Rules in Favor of Competitive Carriers in Dispute with Pacific Bell FYI
October 23, 1998 -- In another victory for competitive local exchange carriers (CLECs) and Internet users, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) ruled that Pacific Bell, the incumbent local exchange carrier (ILEC) in California, must pay CLECs, including ICG Netcom, for the termination of local calls to Internet Service Providers, upholding current interconnection agreements.
By ruling that calls to ISPs are local telephone traffic and subject to commission jurisdiction, the CPUC becomes the 22nd consecutive state commission to order the ILECs to honor interconnection contracts signed with competitive local exchange carriers like ICG Netcom. To date, no state commission has ruled that ISP traffic is not local.
"As a result of this policy decision, the commissioners have clearly and boldly stated that competition in California is important and will thrive,'' said Cindy Schonhaut, senior vice president for government and external affairs for ICG. "Reciprocal compensation was negotiated by Pac Bell in many of its interconnection agreements with CLECs. These agreements were approved by the CPUC and the commission has now reasserted its authority over these decisions.''
ICG Netcom is a new breed of telecommunications company, known as an integrated communications provider (ICP), offering customers one-stop voice and data solutions, including local, long distance, high-speed Internet and data products and services, as well as innovative technologies such as Internet Protocol (IP) telephony and Digital Subscriber Line (DSL).
PS SW, I have a hard time seeing how ICIX missed their numbers. Growth looks good and in line with WinStars growth. WinStar has been struggling to improve their EBITDA loss from like -49.6M to -49.5M, and here ICIX improves theirs from +10M to +15M, and they still get hammered. I view the EPS numbers for these companies as almost meaningless, but that's whats getting focused on. I have no feel at all whether the EPS numbers will come in as expected or not. WinStar used to miss this number pretty regularly, but have improved greatly lately.
I'm starting to lean to ICIX as the better play through WinStar's earnings. The prices always tend to move together. If WinStar misses, it'll move down toward ICIX and ICIX won't get hurt that bad, and if WinStar makes their numbers it may move up but ICIX will probably move up faster to catch up. Anybody have any thoughts?
Kingpin, I'm still waiting on that 4th and 5th bottom on ICIX. How long do you wait? |
