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Technology Stocks : Wi-LAN Inc. (T.WIN) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: puzzlecraft who wrote (536)	9/4/1999 4:42:00 PM
From: Ming	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 16863

Cerent DEFINITELY worth A LOT less than Wi Lan: Thoguh as far as wireless technology is concerned, I know next to nothing, I still believe that Cerent alone has A LOT less potential than Wi Lan. However, cerent's technology compliments Cisco's portfolio well, & thats why the latter dished out a gargantuan sum to buy cerent out. Take the pc/workstation sector for example: mid-range workstations were about 10 times faster than a comparable mid-range PC 10 years ago; furthermore, workstations based on UNIX can do parallel processing whereas Intel-based machines still lag in this sector. today that gap has even enlarged somewhat; yet workstation sales have dramatically trailed PC sales over the recent years: the reason: as PCs become more powerful, the extra computing power becomes useless. Just compare Dell's stock vs. Silicon Graphics in the last 5 years& youll realize the power of this argument. The main sell has been price. This analogy can be applied IMO to this sector: Wilan has a much less powerful product & cerent has a higher-end product built for larger users who need the extra bandwidth. As far as a consumer is concerned, 30 megs/second is more than enuf for over 99.9% of his applications; it doesnt matter if a 3meg download(which is a pretty big one) takes 0.1 seconds(wi-lan) or 0.00001 seconds (cerent). The human senses cannot detect such a small discrepancy in performance. What the human senses do detect very well is the gigantic price tag that comes with this extra performance, & no one in his right mind will pay for it. With philip's help, if Wi-lan can quickly shrink the size of its products, then a lot of network equipment companies(3com, JDS, & just about anyone involved with wire-based consumer telecom) are seriously looking at a bankrupcy threat. Why pay $150 for a slow 56k modem when i can get performance that will outpace ISDN or Cable modems for the same price? This is especially critical for companies that have to share/transfer a lot of data via intranets & LANs. I agree that in the future, (i.e. 5 years or more down the road) stuff like teleconferencing & entertainment boradcasts might be big. Thus far despite the noise made by Broadcast.com, I do not see why i'd want to have HBO thru my computer rather than on TV. (the 2nd way is a lot cheaper &on a much bigger screen too, & i prefer dolby surround sound much better than a puny soundblaster). Furthermore, optical data transport is a wire based technology, to my knowledge. That's why cisco is interested. But that means that in order to use it, you have to build a wire network. And that will cost a lot more than the $50k you're gonna dish out for a transmitter. Wilan's network costs you nothing more than the receivers. It uses thin air(price:$0)rather than fiber optics(price:gazillions, literally). THE OVERWHELMING FIXED COST IN BUILDING THE INFORMATION SUPERHIGHWAY IS INFRASTRUCTURE COST, & WILAN HAS A SOLUTION THAT CAN DEFINITELY SOLVE THIS PROBLEM, PERIOD. Given the amt of annual sales for telcom equipment, the potential economic value created by wi lan is nothing short of astounding. Third world countries that do not have billions to throw at cisco/cerent or lucent will definitely opt for a [product like wilan's. And besides, who says wi lan can't improve on 30mb/sec just like Intel improves on its chips? The conclusion here seems pretty obvious to me, unless there's something that i totally missed out on. What i am concerned about, however, is the competition from lucent/apple(SpacePort). Since wi lan's product is based on patented technology, then the 2 operate on different but related platforms. In that case, price, convenience & marketing will determine the winner. (keep in mind the BETAMAX vs. VHS wars-sony's standard was a much more superior solution but VHS still won the day). I'd like to hear your feedback with regard to this last matter & will conduct some research on my own.

To: puzzlecraft who wrote (536)	9/4/1999 5:05:00 PM
From: Ming	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 16863

Just checked Lucent's website. Their family of wireless products, from AirLoop to Wave Access(one of their latest acquisitions) range from 60kbps to 2-4mbps clearly inferior than wi-lan's 30mbps. And furthermore the lucent products depend on CDMA technology, which securitywise might not be as solid as OFDM, a military offspring(!). Also, i checked for Spaceport at both Lucent & Apple's websites, & failed to find any information about such a product, not even a news release. Clearly, even if this product does exist, it has a rather low priority for the 2 ocmpanies. Regards, Ming