Scrapps and all,
Another real life test; I connected this evening to USR's BB (long distance with AT&T no less) and downloaded a ZIP file that was 1,233,881 bytes. The download took 4 minutes and 10 seconds. I believe the the CPS was 4741 and the connect speed was 48kps. These numbers look pretty damn impressive to me. I think the ball has just started to roll. Although there will be a delay while ISP's bring x2 support to market I think things are going to accelerate relatively quickly in the next couple months. Many ISP's are going to feel tremendous pressure to support x2 once a few of the big boys come on line. NETCOM told me that they are shooting for the end of March. At any rate, I will switch to the first ISP in my area that has x2 support. I'm sure many others are thinking the same thing and the ISP's know it. The ISP's are now in a race to see who can bring on x2 the quickest.
Janice, thanks for the excellent article on Greensperm. This SOB, who I use to have a lot of respect for and who has generally done a good job, is clearly losing it! He didn't mean to talk down the markets?? Give us break!
"With all due respect, would Alan Greenspan please shut up?" columnist James Glassman wrote in the Washington Post newspaper on
Tuesday. "He thinks stocks are too high. But so what? His guess on the 'proper' level of the stock market is no better than anyone else's."
I think the comment above (especially the bold portion) sums things up nicely.
Re: USRX/COMS merger
I still haven't heard any intelligent arguments here that suggest that any of the thread participants know more than Cowell about the future of networking industry, USR's potential/limitations within the industry, or how to create and manage an extremely impressive multi-billion dollar hi-tech company. As soon as someone can convince me that they have better insight and foresight than Cowell I too will turn negative on the merger. Until then I will continue to give Cowell the benefit of the doubt. Much has been said about timing and I agree that the timing was unfortunate. But the technology industry moves with lightening speed. Months are like years in most industries. If Cowell and co. believe that this deal is in the best strategic interest of USR, then it would have been ridiculous to hold up the deal because the timing didn't look good to WS.
Many people here are judging the proposed merger based stictly on the short term effect it has had on the stock price. I would love to know how many people who are currently negative on the deal would still be negative if COMS goes to 50-60 in the next couple months. I'm sure they would be saying what a great idea this merger was.
Good luck to all,
FF |
