Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Technology Stocks : Digital Island,Inc - (Nasdaq- ISLD) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: gdichaz who wrote (158)	7/20/1999 2:53:00 PM
From: Frank A. Coluccio	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1884

Hi Chaz, I don't think we'll see a glut in the popular sense of the term (i.e., purely based on the absolute amount of supply) although I see a lot of capacity that could become stranded (no pun intended) due to purely misalignments in competing deployments, as would be reflected by premature demising of routes, etc. by those who don't cut the mustard, competitively speaking. But these are more the fate of competition, not technology and eventual demand. Stated another way, competitive forces and the headaches associated with logistic and administrative duplicity, or multiplicities of architectures which may often use disjointed designs from one another, may render some (maybe an appreciable amount of) capacity disqualified over time. But if those pockets of capacity are implemented properly along meaningful routes, then they will likely be acquired or otherwise salvaged before their life expectancies have expired, and become aggregated by those who win out in the service provisioning sectors in the same ways that food chains have always worked. The life expectancy of the fiber's relative efficacy, vis a vis higher grades of glass that unfold over time with continued improvements in optical parameter designs, and other normal factors associated with product life cycles must also be taken into account here. This would continue to hold true even if there weren't multi-pronged domestic and global initiatives going on right now to put in additional millions of strand miles. The question in my mind, and one which I think should play a greater part in this discussion, is not so much how much capacity will be available, but rather, How much of it could be harnessed and put to use in a timely manner, and by when? If we use total potential spectrum availability as the yardstick, instead of that which we can harness, then we already have a situation where a fiber glut exists in a great many areas, because we've not yet begun to tap but a fraction of fiber's potential. It's a relative assessment, in other words, and one which is best suited at the present time for brainstorming discussions like this one, more so than anything that will manifest in a tangible way, anytime soon. Colocations, on the other hand, those are another story. We're talking about brick and mortar here and business plans that have to be self sustaining at some point, on their own merits. I do see a lot of these going in, but I don't see the same yields coming from them as those afforded by gains we might expect in wavelength division multiplexing, and optical routing paradigms of the future. It would be interesting to project and plot those curves, don't you think? Got some spare time on your hands? Regards, Frank Coluccio