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To: FR1 who wrote (17937)	12/15/1999 7:36:00 AM
From: Frank A. Coluccio	Respond to of 29970

Franz, thanks. I'm not sure that they went after the real beast. The "primary" inhibitors in the upstream reside in the coaxial portion, not the fiber portion. True, there are problems in the fiber sections to the headend too, but these are not the ones which have caused the reverse direction problems which are now well known. And there surely is always room for improvement on the long haul fiber, only that's not where the choke point is, the one that cuases all of the grief for cable modem users and the cable system administrators. In the past we've discussed the desirability of digitizing, effectively re-engineering, the overall HFC plant. The FNSR product does this, part of the way.. from the field node to the headend, but from what I can see the last mile remains analog. And the coaxial last mile section is the most restrictive section, the weakest link, in the overall path, not the field node to the headend. It's within the neighborhoods, where coaxial will remain, that most of the coaxial F-type connectors and analog amplifiers exist. To a great extent, in fact, it is in the last mile section where T's Lightwire pilot will remove much of the coax and many, if not all, of the amplifiers. But to go a step further, the coax should also be replaced with fiber, and here's where the need for digitization over fiber media exists, more than the solutions cited in the release if improvements in cable modem reverse direction throughput is the desired effect. The grooming and digitization measures they speak of will result in overall improvements if they perform as they have been described in the release. But they are not going after the problems' juggler here, as much as the language in the release would cause one to infer, at first glance. IMO, they are getting a lot of mileage out of the public's awareness of the 'upstream' problem. And while they address some of the problems in the upstream on the fiber path to the headend, they are not addressing the big ones closer to the home, where the weakest link exists, from what I can see. These are only my opinions. There may be more to their solution(s) that I'm unaware of, but I don't see it in this release. Comments and corrections welcome. Regards, Frank Coluccio