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Strategies & Market Trends : Gorilla and King Portfolio Candidates -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: mauser96 who wrote (3195)	6/26/1999 10:00:00 PM
From: Ruffian	Respond to of 54805

<It is harder to make money in a static world>. Lucius, I wish @ times things would calm down, so I can "Really Enjoy The Avenues and Possibilities Qualcomm is presenting on its menu. All The Best, Mp

To: mauser96 who wrote (3195)	6/27/1999 2:11:00 AM
From: Uncle Frank	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 54805

>> In fact if you consider AT&T and the LU and Bells derived from it, and their profits since the breakup, the wise thing to do would have been for AT&T to divest voluntarily. Lucius, actually T did spin off the Baby Bells voluntarily; it was a way to end the ongoing litigation and scrutiny from the doj. I think Rockerfeller's Standard Oil empire was the only company the government actually forced to split. In both cases, the shareholders value appreciated enormously. It wouldn't surprise me to see Microsoft opt for the same solution as T chose <I hope>. Frank

To: mauser96 who wrote (3195)	6/27/1999 4:34:00 PM
From: Frank A. Coluccio	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 54805

Lucius, pardon my out of sequence reply to your post 3195. I've been all over the map. "You see "toll quality" from a business standpoint, but I was thinking about it also on a consumer level." I see your point, but I don't think the two can be separated, if the carrier wished to remain whole. It's kinda hard to go EBITDA + when your subscriber base leaves you due to lousy sounding voice delivery. -g- "Who can really say for sure how much cheaper packet switched voice will be in a couple of years? Certainly enough to tempt people in countries where the average income is much lower than the US. Maybe they could just give it away as part of a ISP package like done with e-mail today." Maybe I oversimplified this point. VoIP can only be achieved overseas to points where Internet infrastructure can be delivered. Or in the same proximity through extension onto the local PSTN through local central office arrangements where gateway devices would need to be installed. This, of course, requires the local PTT to be agreeable to the idea in the first place, which isn't the case very often. (Instead, many overseas ITSPs (Internet telephony service providers) find themselves having to take their wires in and out of the CO multiple times to achieve the same end game as they would have achieved if they were permitted to colocate in the central offices, in the first place. And this is all a part of the governments way of saying, in many cases, that if they don't acknowledge what is going on by this form or rejection, then they don't have to deal with it out in the open. At issue, behind the curtains, is the matter of international accounting rates, settlements, and the pressures that are being applied by the FCC and the World Trade Organization, primarily on tariffs and deregulation in general.) I've been fortunate enough to try some of these links out recently, and they worked amazingly well, in many instances. Of course, it's still a pot luck issue where the foreign end has not been implemented with robust provisions, yet. But to the main hubs (like Moscow, London, Milan) they are quite robust. But the requisite PCs and gateways - in addition to the POP locations that need to be in place, first - are NOT no brainers in many areas. My earlier treatment on this matter upstream tended to be focused on the technology itself, and not necessarily on the ease of deployment. Many restrictions, in fact, have more to do with gaining the acceptance (or the forbearance, as it were) of the local PTT, than they do with the technology. And it would also be helpful to keep in mind that the variant of VoIP that I'm referring to here is nothing more than the GSTN emulation type, and does not take into account any of the Internet's other features and attributes. It's simply a form of replacing the mid links of the established carriers with an IP cloud (whether it's a private IP cloud or the public Internet). "On this thread we should be mainly looking for true gorillas as strictly defined by the gg book, but they are so scarce that lots of us are willing to stretch for diversity. Almost everybody here already owns the main gorillas. Do you have any suggestions for at least prince status?" Agreed, in this space diffusion has run rampant, uncertainty abounds, and the end state target is still very elusive in terms of what it will look like. My guess is that we will wind up with the classic scenario of a top three (you know who they are already, IMO, being LU, CSCO and NT) holding down some fifty or sixty percent of the market here domestically with the North American carriers, at least. I would leave some room here and the possibility of a foursome to include Nokia or Ericsson, and possibly even QCOM on the fringes as wireless IP voice ramps up. The remaining forty or fifty points might go to several dozen others. Among the 'others' however, I think that there will be several pure plays (despite contemporary wisdom differing with me on this) who will make their mark in the convergence space on the "Internet" side of the equation (as opposed to being supported primarily from a PSTN emulation perspective). No, I have not identified or formed any opinions on any of those players yet. They usually die a quick death because no one believe in their philosophy, or they get bought out too fast by one of the players in the top three circle. But I think that some will manage to fit through the cracks as time goes by, like CSCO once did in the face of N.E.T. and Timeplex. Tune into the VoIP thread from time to time. Maybe one of these jewels will emerge there, if it hasn't already. Regards, Frank Coluccio