COMS is well positioned for this astrnomical opportunity in the home/small business mkt multiple systems connectivity segment with intelligent cache-based common link Internet option through cable, or xDSL options. This segment, when it takes off will be much much bigger than the small/medium business. COMS with its strength in this segment will get the lion share. In fact, the size of this mkt segment will easily surpass what CSCO gets from its small/medium business segment. To be more exact, this segment revenue will be so large that the current CSCO revenue stream from the small/medium segment will look like peanuts. Going forward, COMS can potentially take over CSCO as #1 in networking becasue of this extremely large mkt. Look at INTC, the home PC mkt boom basically propels INTC into the #1 position.
Naive investors and no-clue MMs are letting go of COMS becasue they do not know the technology nor they've the vision. Look for COMS to be the key player in this sector and the stock will appreciate greatly. At this price, COMS is a big big bargain, All imo.
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Networkers Phone Home -- As New Networking Solutions
Emerge, The Ubiquity Of Copper Is Giving Phone Wiring A
Head Start
Jason P. McKay
In retail sales, location is the name of the game. That truism may also apply to
home networking. As demand expands, the telephone lines snaking through
the walls of virtually every home in the country are emerging as the early
favorite to dominate the market. A lot is at stake. By all accounts, home
networking is destined for great things (see "Dream House," Sept. 1998). The
thinking is that it will initially link multiple PCs and peripherals, then extend to
home security and surveillance, power monitoring, entertainment devices and
other areas.
The first phase is under way. The number of multiple-PC homes in the United
States is estimated to be more than 20 million this year, with about 12 percent
of those households operating home networks, according to Cahners In-Stat
Group (Newton, Mass.). The research firm also forecasts that revenue from
home networking equipment will increase to more than $550 million in 2000,
up from about $83 million in 1998, a rise of more than 560 percent.
In such a rapidly expanding market, being in place right now counts for a lot.
"We think that the phone line is the most promising and will be the most
popular," says John Armstrong, vice president of networking at Dataquest Inc.
(San Jose, Calif.). Other methods of deployment will be used, he says, but
existing phone lines appear likely to be the dominant player. The other
candidates include wireless home local-area networks (LANs), the
high-capacity "firewire"-specification 1394 from the Institute of Electrical and
Electronics Engineers (IEEE, New York)-and techniques that use the power
lines.
A majority of residences don't have wiring capable of supporting traditional
networking technology, so the key is the emergence of solutions that don't
require ripping up walls, says Roy Johnson, vice president of the home
networking business unit at 3Com Corp. (Santa Clara, Calif.). Traditional
Ethernet requires a structured environment-utilizing a particular type of cable
such as Category 5-that isn't present in homes, says Brent Lang, 3Com's
home networking product line manager.
The company that solves this problem will be well positioned for the future.
3Com says its technology combats such data-destroyers as loop backs,
impulse noise interference from appliances and crosstalk from phone
conversations. "This new technology we're working on overcomes some of
the challenges of these unstructured arbitrary topologies and some of the
interferences that may occur," Lang says. The approach is to establish multiple
channels. If there's noise or other interference on a particular frequency, the
system is agile enough to skip that channel and reassign the energy to other
channels. This enables the signal to be transmitted without the interference,
says Lang.
In addition, because traditional plain old telephone service (POTS) operates
at 300 to 400 Hz, 3Com's equipment operates at 4 to 10 MHz. This allows
for simultaneous use of telephones and home networks, says Lang.
Where potential is shown, vendors generally follow-and home networking is
no different. 3Com and Microsoft Corp. recently announced they will develop
cobranded home networking products. Initial products will include Ethernet
and home phone line networking kits with radio frequency (RF) and
power-line carrier (PLC) kits to follow. The products will be compatible with
Home Phoneline Networking Alliance (HomePNA, San Ramon, Calif.)
standards and will provide 10-Mbit/s connectivity. "This could be big if it's
done properly," says Karuna Uppal, consumer market convergence analyst at
The Yankee Group (Boston).
Panasonic Digital Concepts Center, a subsidiary of Matsushita Electric
Industrial Co. Ltd. (MEI, Osaka, Japan), and Epigram Inc. (Sunnyvale, Calif.)
are also working together to develop digitally aware Panasonic consumer
electronic products that will use Epigram's InsideLine technology to provide
home networking capabilities.
Epigram says its "no new wires" approach gives millions of users access to
10-Mbit/s Ethernet LAN functionality through existing household and small
business copper phone lines. The company says its system simplifies network
installation and maintenance and that existing phone lines will serve as the link
for shared access to the Internet, peripherals, networked gaming and
telephones.
Sensing an urgent demand from consumers and home-office workers as well
as vendors and telecommunications providers looking to extend service
offerings, Sprint Corp. agrees that the home networking market is set for
growth. But Sprint sees a future in which the different infrastructures-telephone
wire, RF, power line and cable-will all need to interoperate.
"The ability of any one of the infrastructures to operate in and of itself and do
the things that ultimately our customers want done is limited," says Sprint
spokesman Jeff Shafer. What really matters is having technology that enables
all of these things to work together and connecting that technology to a
network that delivers very powerful broadband applications, such as the
Sprint ION network, he says.
Copyright ® 1999 CMP Media Inc. |
