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Technology Stocks : LAST MILE TECHNOLOGIES - Let's Discuss Them Here -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Raymond Duray who wrote (4422)	7/3/1999 4:20:00 PM
From: Frank A. Coluccio	Respond to of 12823

Ray, thanks for that excellent, if not provocative, post. And it's good to see that you're getting some mileage from the Denton work. Perhaps some day we can go back and forth on it here (take your pick whose side you'd like to take) and break it down into its major parts, for discussion purposes. I'm sure that someone here would like to debate it with you. [Hi, WTC! lml, Denver, Mike, Darren, and All? Who'd like to volunteer to take Ray on in a bellhead-nethead debate?] Don't mention it... I feel like the Don King of the Last Mile at this point. "Overlooked in the discussion is the most powerful solution of all. Namely fiber optics, with its vastly superior bandwidth." The absence of any mention itself does more harm to his argument than if he'd have recited the same old pricing rationales, albeit, those are getting very old now, in the face of lowered costs associated with the VCSELs you cited, and improvements in the area of sending broadband over less expensive short-haul multimode. He doesn't simply overlooking any mention of fiber in that part, as you suggest, in my opinion. Rather, he was merely abiding by the preferences of the dominant forces in the industry to tacitly dispel it, in the hope that it will go away and come back some later day. Rain, rain, go away... Of course, there are always some good counter-arguments that maintain that the ILEC franchises hold them to a level of responisibility where they must remain fiduciarilly prudent, forcing them to optimize what they have in place versus going after some fleeting, and as you say, still unknown value structure. Comments? Anyone? Regards, Frank Coluccio

To: Raymond Duray who wrote (4422)	7/3/1999 4:58:00 PM
From: Frank A. Coluccio	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 12823

ps - Ray, One of the problems with the ensuing value structures on the 'net which are engendered by broadband is not that they will not cause wealth creation for the participants. Surely wealth will be created. Rather, the very nature of many emerging value structures is to shift the reward to those layers of usage that are removed from the physical transport medium, altogether. This has to be a less-than-appealing prospect right now in an era of runaway (although still very vaporous to a large extent) expectations regarding the eventual fruits of e-commerce and enhanced entertainment services delivery. E-com, in many ways, doesn't make sense to the facilities based provider unless they are able to exact some claim to the overall reward component in the structure. In other words, unless they partake in the actual content side of the business, then there is no really lucrative incentives in it for them at this time to sell bandwidth purely on a cost plus basis, when everyone else's margins and ROIs who ride atop the DSL or fiber, or what have you, can far exceed their own. The problem they face then becomes one of core competence, and not having any in content. Ouch. I just recalled some of the failed JVs between RBOCs and content providers in this space which wound up in ashes earlier this decade. Thinking out loud for a moment, I can see a BEL or SBC partnering with a DoubleClick and others in this context. Now, there's an idea. A Last Mile provider enhancing the service capabilities of their most-favored advertisers' and other related organizations' in their ability to do certain things on the last mile component of the'net that others can't. Why stop with the ad companies, how about the principals, the makers of goods and services, themselves? A kind of context-based feature privilege, based on who you are and your relationship with the xLEC/SP. Hmm... "Why not?", I argue with myself. A principal advertizer could simply claim to be buying a layered service from the xLEC in this fashion that is dormant most of the time, and invoked only when an end user happens across their content. Something like a quick spurt of bandwidth on demand. Somebody, Quick! Get me a patent lawyer! Regards, Frank Coluccio

To: Raymond Duray who wrote (4422)	7/8/1999 1:26:00 PM
From: Geof Hollingsworth	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 12823

The techniques of DWDM and pure optical switching by means of VCSELS and other lasing semiconductor solutions will in short order filter down to solve last mile problems. I am confused (but fascinated) by the above, and by your and Frank C's belief that FITL is a practical near-term last mile solution. When you say "optical switching by means of VCSELs", do you mean using tunable VCSLs? If so, I think there are serious power and tuning continuity problems yet to be solved, plus I don't know of anyone making surface-emitting lasers which operate at DWDM frequencies. Will the fiber in the local loop be operating at a different frequency than in the MAN and the long-haul?