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Technology Stocks : Nortel Networks (NT) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: The Phoenix who wrote (4283)	1/19/2000 6:03:00 PM
From: telecomguy	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 14638

I think the original debate was centered around whether the old-world Carriers who control the backbone would be able to make money off the bandwidth............. Your examples are anecdotal and outright misleading at best. The fact that some companies may trade off bandwidth as a loss-leader to quickly ramp up their customer base does not at all mean that bandwidth is going to be free. You are really talking about bandwidth being "free" at the retail level and besides it is NOT really free even at the retail level when you consider that the surfer has to satisfy certain conditions to receive free access service. If McDonald's gives away a free Pokemon cards to their customer's to draw kid traffic into their store, are you implying that Pokemon cards are free? Do you not think that McDonalds is paying Nintendo for EVERY one of those cards that McDonalds' is giving away? If an ISP is giving away a PC, are you going to argue that PC's are going to become free? Of course not --- the fact that the ISP decides to give away free PC's or free access (bandwidth) does not mean that bandwidth is free as much as PC's are not free. Gary, I am not sure why you are making such an amateurish point but you are dead wrong when you talk about bandwidth being free..........sure the price of bandwidth will likely fluctuate as the supply increases (Global Crossing, World-Wide Fibre, Oxygen, Colt Telecom, Viatel, etc. enter into the carrier's carrier market) but to imply that Global Crossing after investing hundreds of billions of dollars will GIVE AWAY bandwidth to other Carriers or ISP's or ASP's is preposterous and does not even need me to respond. As it long as it takes Carriers to spend billions to build bandwidth, they WILL charge the application or communication service provider for bandwidth and to think otherwise is being extremely naive. So anyway, going back to our original discussion, Carriers will make money off bandwidth and there will be small % of retailers who will put up with a lot to get free access but to imply that the whole industry will be a freebie is ridiculous......life doesn't work like that and if it actually pans out like you say, you will see ZERO investment by the Carriers into the infrastructure and bandwidth.