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

To: elmatador who wrote (4481)	7/7/1999 4:35:00 AM
From: elmatador	Respond to of 12823

The opening of the local loop -Telecom Act 96 and all that- has been blocked by the incumbents which didn't want to see CLEC's entering their profitable business. Comfortable with this situation at home, with CLEC's unable to make a dent into the customers' base, incumbents find more profitable to go overseas investing in the business they know. That was a better proposition than going into battle with their competitors by opening the local loop. Why engage at home providing new services which they did not know much about, for which they had an uncertain payback with technologies that were not mature in a regulatory environment was not clear? No wonder ADSL has languished and didn't take off. The Bell South's, France Telecom's, Telefonica's and BT's of this world were busy using their capital to build wireless in South Africa, India, Brazil, Hungary and so forth. The exception of this rule is Germany's Deutsche Telekom which had Mannesman, Othelo and VIAG eating their sauerkraut and had- with Germanic single mindness- opened up their market, albeit fencing the CLEC's with high connection charges. This seems to be changing now: (the news are below) US: The FCC tried for three years to compel the Bell companies to open their local markets to competition by promising they could then enter the long distance business. So now the Feds are threatening SBC with up to $2.2 billion in fines if it doesn't open its market within explicit time frames and guidelines. Britain: Oftel, the British Telecom watch dog will force to BT to upgrade their local loop to broadband. Oftel's approach would force it to upgrade local networks by mid 2001, or allow new entrants to do so, piggybacking on its existing lines. Australia: Under intense pressure by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission's (ACCC) Telstra has moved one step ahead with its Data Mode of Operation. Telstra chief Ziggy Switkowski is trying to bring about a cultural change among Tesltra's 55,000 staff. He informed them in May 1999 that they were no longer working for a telephone company.