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Strategies & Market Trends : LastShadow's Position Trading -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jeff Jordan who wrote (26859)	12/11/1999 10:05:00 AM
From: Jeff Jordan	Respond to of 43080

What's the next big thing? Wireless....IMO ANCC....is one stock I intend to hold as long as possible for me... biz.yahoo.com Kennard: Fixed wireless could rival DSL, cable Printer friendly version Send this article to a colleague By David Rohde Network World Fusion, 12/10/99 Broadband fixed-wireless systems are a potential widespread competitor to DSL and cable modems, according to nation's top telecom regulator. And the creation of very large telecom companies through mergers could help bring about such a three-way race for control of broadband networking to the home. That was the view Federal Communications Commission Chairman William Kennard expressed in yesterday's keynote to the annual gathering of the nation's top telecom lawyers. Kennard didn't tip his hand as to whether the FCC is likely to approve the two biggest pending mergers among carriers - between Bell Atlantic and GTE on the one hand and MCI WorldCom and Sprint on the other. But he did say that the "central focus" of many of the FCC's policies is to create more wireless spectrum so that carriers can develop a national footprint for broadband services that bring high-speed voice and data directly to the home. The moves by carriers to ramp up DSL and cable-modem service constitute a "really exciting race that's developing," Kennard said. But, he added: "If that results in a duopoly, we will have failed." To prevent that from happening, he said, "we're going to see the emergence of another broadband pipe in the wireless area." AT&T earlier this week announced it would form a national competitive local exchange carrier to promote fixed wireless local services, though the new venture would offer service only where AT&T isn't the local cable provider. In addition, MCI WorldCom and Sprint have made the combination of their wireless assets - Sprint's widespread PCS deployment and both companies' licenses for broadband spectrum originally developed for television - a linchpin of the logic for their merger. In mergers of large companies, Kennard promoted the approach of neither approving nor denying the combination outright but of okaying it so long as the combined companies commit to broadband deployments. For example, SBC recently offered what Kennard claimed is "the most competitive set of market-opening conditions ever proffered to the FCC" in exchange for approval to purchase Ameritech. Kennard noted that in the Microsoft antitrust case, some observers are calling on the court to break up Microsoft as part of a "structural" remedy. But Kennard said that in the case of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, "Congress adopted a different approach. Instead of forcing the local phone monopolies to divest, Congress gave the FCC the power to pry open the network and make it available to competitors." Kennard did not directly address the question of Bell Atlantic's current application to enter the long-distance market for calls originating and terminating in New York State. But other speakers at the annual telecom-policy conference of the Federal Communications Bar Association left it clear that if the FCC does not find that Bell Atlantic has met the required 14-point checklist for local competition in order to enter long-distance, the agency will have some explaining to do. "I believe the checklist has been met," flatly stated Representative Michael Oxley [R-Ohio], vice chairman of the House telecommunications, trade and consumer protection committee. Oxley implicitly warned opponents of the long-distance application not to overplay their hand, criticizing big carriers who are always asking for more deregulation for themselves "while whining that their competitors need more regulation. My feeling is that the days of that kind of lobbying are numbered." The FCC must rule on Bell Atlantic's New York application by Dec. 28. Larry Strickling, chief of the FCC's Common Carrier Bureau, later told the conference that the FCC is trying to come to a decision before Christmas. Oxley did join Kennard in endorsing the concept of using fixed wireless as a third competitor to the home, specifically citing a combined MCI WorldCom and Sprint as a key prospect for doing so.