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Technology Stocks : WCOM -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: FNS who wrote (5691)	1/12/2000 1:06:00 AM
From: Luce Wildebeest	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 11568

Here's a post from the Yahoo thread. Any comments? 1/12/00 12:18 am Msg: 44848 of 44861 Do you folks actually invest in telecom companies wihtout understanding the difference between a backbone network and an access network? The access network carries traffic from the customer premise to the backbone network. Cable and phone compete as alternative (broadband) access network alternatives. The backbone is the longhaul network that carries traffic across the country. The point everyone is missing here is that the battle for control of the access netwrok is all about battle for control of the entry point to the customer. In other words, he who owns the customer access wins the battle. There are only two technologies which have widespread penetration of the CONSUMER premise - phone lines and cable lines. The RBOCs only competitive advantage is the fact that they dominate control over phone lines. WCOM's biggest weakness (not commented on by many analysts or "experts") is the fact that they do not have a strong position in the "last mile" to CONSUMERS homes. You should be much more concerned about this than any nonesense about the loss of Internet traffic or competition with their backbone for internet traffic. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------