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Technology Stocks : Cisco Systems, Inc. (CSCO) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Zoltan! who wrote (28326)	9/16/1999 9:51:00 AM
From: Michael F. Donadio	Respond to of 77398

CSCO involved in DSL Catapult: uswest.com September 15, 1999 U S WEST Catapults High-Speed Internet Access to Mass Market with Nation's First 'DSL-on-Demand' at $19.95/mo. for Casual Internet Users --On Heels of 3rd Straight 10,000 DSL Subscriber Month, U S WEST Introduces 'MegaBit Select' in 12 States, Giving Casual Internet Users 'DSL-on-Demand' Access for About Price of 2nd Phone Line-- DENVER - Today, casual Internet surfers in nearly 40 cities in 12 states can blast past the slow downloads and delays of traditional dial-up Internet access with U S WEST MegaBit Select, a breakthrough 'DSL-on-demand' service that is designed and priced specifically for recreational Internet use. For just $19.95 a month, customers can now rocket across the Internet at about 10 times faster than a 28.8 Kbps dial-up modem. U S WEST is the first to broadly deploy unique 'on-demand' Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) technology that gives customers who don't require an 'always-on' connection the benefits of power-surfing the Internet at 256 Kbps. Available for about the price of a second phone line, MegaBit Select is a significant value for customers who are considering a second line for their computer. "MegaBit Select will dramatically accelerate the use of high-speed Internet services by mass market consumers," said Joe Zell, president of U S WEST !NTERPRISE Networking. "'DSL-on-demand' is perfect for the majority of home Internet users - people who are on the Internet a couple of hours a day, and who don't require the 'always-on' connection that standard MegaBit Services provides. Recreational and weekend Internet surfers will enjoy dedicated, high-speed Internet access at a price that makes sense for their lifestyle." MegaBit Select is the newest offering in U S WEST's portfolio of industry-leading MegaBit Services. In August, U S WEST added more than 10,000 new MegaBit Services customers for the third month in a row - an average of 500 new customers every weekday. To date, U S WEST has nearly 70,000 DSL customers - including almost 15,000 businesses - giving the company nearly 40 percent of all DSL customers in the nation. U S WEST has topped a seven-percent penetration rate in the addressable market of online customers where MegaBit Services is available. MegaBit Select customers will enjoy most of the benefits of DSL access: High-speed Internet connections and the ability to make and receive phone calls while online, providing an exceptional value for casual Internet users who aren't online all the time. MegaBit Select subscribers get full-access speeds of 256 Kbps when they go online - almost 10 times faster than traditional 28.8 Kbps modems - all over their existing phone line. Like all MegaBit Services, subscribers simply launch their browser software to get online. Customers can choose from over 200 Internet service providers, including U S WEST.net. MegaBit Select was introduced in Portland, Ore. and Seattle, Tacoma and Spokane, Wash. this summer. It is now available in nearly all of the more than 40 cities in which U S WEST has deployed MegaBit Services, including Denver, Minneapolis/St. Paul and Salt Lake City. In the remaining markets where U S WEST MegaBit Services is deployed, Phoenix and Tucson, Ariz., MegaBit Select will be available next month. The new service requires the same line-qualification process as MegaBit Services, and will be generally available in the same neighborhoods where MegaBit is available today. "People who access the Internet over dial-up modems represent the largest opportunity today for the growth of high-speed Internet options like DSL," noted Zell. "By providing the most competitively priced high-speed alternative to dial-up Internet service available in the marketplace today, MegaBit Select brings all of the excitement and advantages of broadband to an entirely new group of recreational Internet customers." MegaBit Select is priced at just $19.95/month and can be combined with unlimited U S WEST.net Internet access for an additional $17.95/month - creating an industry-leading $37.90/month package. MegaBit Select is also compatible with any of the more than 200 Internet service providers that support U S WEST MegaBit Services. U S WEST set the pace for the DSL industry when it was the first to deploy a widely available DSL service, introducing it in Phoenix in October 1997 and across U S WEST's region in May 1998. U S WEST's other DSL offerings, including MegaHome and MegaOffice, are geared toward Internet users or teleworkers who need a dedicated, 'always-on' connection to the Internet or to their corporate network, as well as casual Web surfers who want instant online access all the time. MegaHome and MegaOffice offer dedicated, 'always-on' access with no limitations on how long customers spend online and no limitations on what applications customers use - unlike most cable modem services. MegaBit Services is available today in more than 40 cities across U S WEST's region, in almost 250 central offices serving nearly 7 million customer households. It has partnered with Cisco Systems to bring this unique service to market. Saw John Chambers last night on 20/20 and he truly has a vision as to the future of the internet and high-speed access. His vision is propelling implementation forward unlike most RBOCs that see DSL as cannibalizing their traditional high paying revenue streams. I see CSCO ascending, Michael

To: Zoltan! who wrote (28326)	9/18/1999 1:22:00 AM
From: Brian Malloy	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 77398

This was from last weeks BW. When you read it and contemplate what Glassman is saying recently, it appears that the fed in part is not only saying that they are missing part of the gains in the economy but they are trying to get new metrics to account for it. Ergo the "new economy" exists after all, decloaking or leaving stealth mode. Also, these corrections may go back as far as 1959. The impact? All of a sudden, high tech can look awfully cheap and then we play catch up for a few years. Kind of sound like prelude to Glassman's 36K. Somewhere between 28 October and the end of November the markets and in particular the techs and .coms may be in for one hell of a rally, just like last year. Regards New Math for the New Economy For the past few years, government statisticians have felt like greyhounds chasing a mechanical rabbit. No matter how often they revise and update data, they can never catch up with the economy's pace of change. The effects of the Information Revolution in particular have proved hard to pin down. But now the Bureau of Economic Analysis is about to make another stab at capturing the New Economy in government data. Starting in late October, the Commerce Dept. will finally acknowledge that business spending on software is an investment, just like spending on computers and communications gear. That means, for the first time, business software will be counted as part of gross domestic product. 'We will now recognize that software has a long purchase life,' says Brent R. Moulton, a top economist at the BEA. This single change will have an enormous impact on growth, investment, productivity, and inflation. The BEA will not release its estimates until Oct. 28, but it has described its methodology. Based on that, BUSINESS WEEK estimates that software will likely add 0.15 to 0.3 percentage points to annual GDP growth over the last three years--a significant increase. GROWTH JUMP. Because the BEA will recalculate GDP for earlier years as well, growth rates will be raised as far back as 1959. But the changes will likely be bigger in recent years. 'Because software use has accelerated recently, you have to assume the '90s will have higher growth rates relative to the '80s,' says Michael R. Englund, chief economist at Standard & Poor's MMS. 'It's a repeat of the New Economy claims.' And since growth will be higher than previously estimated, productivity will likely be revised up as well, notes Lynn Reaser, chief economist at Bank of America Private Bank in Jacksonville, Fla. In addition, capital spending will go up from its already high levels. In the second quarter of 1999, for example, capital spending per employee in the private sector was running at an annual rate of nearly $8,000, about half of which was spent on information technology, Reaser says. The new revisions could boost measured private-sector investment in information technology by a full third. 'This goes a long way toward explaining the exemplary performance of the U.S. economy in recent years,' says Reaser. Moreover, the BEA will calculate a price index for both prepackaged and custom software. The exact figures won't be known until the October release date, but the BEA's discussion makes it clear that the new data will show software prices falling, perhaps by 5% or more annually. That will pull down the inflation rate by some amount. The BEA will make other changes to the data in October, besides introducing software into GDP. A better handling of government employee retirement plans will have the effect of increasing personal savings. And improvements in tracking the financial sector could affect growth as well. Moreover, the BEA will likely adjust the data to eliminate part of the statistical discrepancy between GDP and gross domestic income. In theory, these measures should be equal. But over the last three years, the discrepancy has built up to 1.4% of GDP, close to the largest on record. If the October revision eliminates half that, the growth rate for the last three years will bump up 0.2 percentage points more. This still may not describe the full effect of the Internet boom, but it's a lot closer than the figures we had before. By Michael J. Mandel in New York and Laura Cohn in Washington