Mazman, your post is interesting to me from a number of perspectives. It probably boils down to semantics, and how you want to classify your investment groups.
I agree with your bandwidth assumptions, and the wisdom of stocking up on b-w enabling cos. But the ones you've listed, with the possible exception of this one (GBLX, because it is actually placing the fiber into the sea), are almost exclusively "consumers and deliverers" of bandwidth in the fulfillment of their 'services,' but they are not the fundamental enablers of b-w, IMO.
I haven't anything against the cos you've selected from an intrinsic standpoint, far from it, I just don't see them at the 'heart' of the b-w solution, rather I see them as packagers and transporters of this commodity, instead. Which isn't bad in itself, and probably good to hold on to for that category of investments, but not for basic b-w enablement.
If your goal is to capitalize on those who will make b-w more abundant from the creation standpoint, then I would go after the root... i.e., those cos whose business it is to drive the next several powers of ten into those backbones which are owned by your picks. Like MFNX, QWST, IIXC, CIEN, Pirelli, NT, LU (although the last two are not pure plays in this field, granted) some of the Terabit routers, emerging optical routing cos, etc. These will be the companies that your picks are currently, and will continue, buying from in the future in order to shore up their b-w deficits.
And for what it's worth, while WCOM has an extremely rich mix of services today, near to the point of being unrivaled, they also provide ample bottle-necks because of their multi-layered (what would you expect after so many acquisitions?) legacy infrastructures, with the possible exceptions of UUNet and some of the more recent CLECs they've picked up.
Second thought, most of those CLECs themselves have followed nearly the same basic model of pre-Bell System divestiture, as well, when it comes to switched hierarchical architectures, with some modifications. As it probably still should be, until the IETF along with the ITU, and evolution, take their due course.
All of the above will need to acquire from the stable I've indicated in order to extricate themselves from the quagmire of DS0-bound switched-service nuts and bolts that have been their mainstay for so many years.
Like I say, it's probably only a matter of semantics, but sometimes it's useful, IMO, to slice and dice these issues in order to gain a clearer sense about them.
Regards, Frank Coluccio |
