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Technology Stocks : Qwest Communications (Q) (formerly QWST) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Alejandro who wrote (4764)	7/31/1999 10:51:00 PM
From: Frank A. Coluccio	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 6846

Hello Ali, All, I was interested in your entire message, but the following passage caught my eye, especially. Let me babble a bit about this topic in general. What follows are some of my own thoughts on the economics surrounding what is being called a bandwidth glut, and these thoughts are not directed at you, specifically. "The only question I see is if the need for bandwidth is not as much as projected. Everybody now is laying fibre. The only areas where the selling of bandwidth is a problem is where competion exists in the same area. I don't know of anybody laying fibre in an area covered by someone else already. Well, gotta qualify that also. There is a buying of existing fibre already laid." I think that what many folks don't take into account is that, for the most part, the laying of the fiber itself represents a one-time sunken cost. Sure, there is ongoing maintenance to contend with, but those costs pale in comparison to the construction phases. During the lifetime of that fiber, the construction price will be paid many times over on engineering, routing and wavelength-switching hardware at the end points, regeneration devices along the way, dynamic DWDMs as time goes by, and there will always be the overhead associated with network administration and other architectural considerations. Viewed another way, While an abundance of bandwidth lies in a potential state right now, with only a fraction of it that can be justifiably classified as even nascent at the current time. Very little of it is actually usable right now. It's potential will ultimatley manifest only when greater efficiencies unfold in wavelength related technologies, i.e., as the state of photonic delivery improves, over time. And this will take place continuously over the life expectancy of the fiber, up until some point when the permissiveness of the fiber is reached (i.e., when it can't be stretched any further), at which time the carriers will be left to consider replacing it with newer and improved grades of glass which have higher carrying capabilities. That's where some of those the hollow conduits come into play. In relative terms, right now what we're looking at is hardly more than a lot of smelted sand. Even when entire strands are leased or sold to NSPs, they are currently only producing a mere fraction of their ultimate potential in the way of information throughput. Getting at fiber's ultimate capacity, in other words, is not as much of a no brainer as many perceive these days with all of this talk about a bandwidth glut. There is no bandwidth glut right now, despite the appearance of a "fiber" glut. In order to get at the "bandwidth" that lies dormant within those fibers, it's going to take lots of engineering, and even greater amounts of planning and implementation. All of this translates into a tremendous amount of additional capital outlays at all levels of carrier infrastructure... both institutionally (personnel wise), and at nodes, terminus points, and in field regeneration locations, as time goes by. And all of this buildup in the core will eventually lead to the encroachment of fiber into the last mile, as well. FWIW. Regards, Frank Coluccio

To: Alejandro who wrote (4764)	8/2/1999 9:08:00 AM
From: Harry J.	Respond to of 6846

AC - RE: your "The only question I see is if the need for bandwidth is not as much as projected. Everybody now is laying fibre." Kind of reminds me of the old semiconductor mainframes with "huge" 256k of working memory - "Who needs more?" The answer was "me" so I didn't have to punch all those extra stupid cards and manually verify them before dropping them in the hopper. Or AT&T's pc with an 8086 chip going begging while IBM's sold with the slower 8088 - "Who needs all that power?" Or trying to listen to FM radio on the road - used to be you couldn't find a station outside large metro areas; now there are so many, they bleed over one another even outside of city lights. Have no fear about excess capacity, like entropy, we'll just keep filling up that bandwidth, and judging by the speed at which we are all moving from single-send telephone twisted pair to cable and xDSL, not to mention wireless, it will be sooner rather than later. In short, I think you focussed on the correct issue - the last mile access to users. Already, I can talk LD over the internet for only my isp hookup cost (if the other party also has a hookup and some easy-to-install software) plus the cost of my local phone hookup, and I frankly don't care what company Bell Atl (my local phone co.) or my isp has handle the packets once they leave my pc or how they are handled (wire, fibre, wireless) - I only care that they arrive at the distant location intact. In such a case, who is selecting the LD carrier between my isp and the isp of the person or company I am talking to or sharing data with? That's why I personally like what Qwest is doing and where it is going. Regards, Harry