Pat, thanks for your excellent review.
I have a few questions.
<Geared to the CATV market, their LMDS components convert light waves to radio frequencies that allow cable programming to be carried from the neighborhood to homes without the need of fiber optic cables --- cable to the neighborhood, wireless to each home. In addition to the consumer market, there's a big market in small and mid-sized businesses. I believe only 3% of this market has cable, leaving a huge opportunity for last-mile wireless. >
It would seem this has limited appeal unless the components are very expensive and profitable. I assume they are only selling for the base stations, and the dishes at every end node will use other technology? Do you have any forcast for the potential number of base stations? LMDS has been slow deploying as have MMDS. What is your opinion on acceptance?
I have followed MMDS, and have seen a recent buying binge from Sprint and MCI as they acquire license holders to get last mile connections. They seem to prefer MMDS, although I'm not sure. Would VARL also be selling components for MMDS and VSAT for that matter?
I also keep reading about opposition to wireless towers. This is probably PCS, but still it seems that LMDS requires many towers due to their smaller cells and if they get resistance to putting up stations...
I don't really understand the cell phone angle. Are you saying VARL has a chip going into handsets, or base stations? If they had a chip in every hand set, that would be great.
I'm a bit vague on what VARL does. I bought it a couple years ago for my daughters account. I feel the company may be too dependent on one or 2 engineers? All small caps have done badly, but this one has really been disappointing when you look at their growth. Makes me think there's something missing.
Regards,
Mark |
