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Technology Stocks : Frank Coluccio Technology Forum - ASAP -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: ftth who wrote (1031)	1/25/2000 12:46:00 AM
From: Frank A. Coluccio	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1782

Dave, these have been some extraordinary stories to absorb all in one sitting, and a bit overwhelming to contemplate at one time, I'll have to admit. It's interesting to note the differences in their make ups. Clearworks seems to have come out of their incubator. What did you think of their approach using OpticalNetworks gear? I noticed that they are still using an RF format for delivering their video component. Who is it now who has the proper set top box decodes to accept a digitally formatted video payload, and converts it to back to NTSC over coax for connecting to the TV set? Do you know? I believe I've seen this from GIC's NLVL, but I'm not sure. In any event, I would think that such an all-digital approach over the pipe would be a much cleaner one going forward, than having to contend with RF as a tenant on the route. Such would be an ideal opportunity to begin video over IP, in fact. Could this simply be a case of PP, or Paradigm Paralysis," as fellow poster Chris Mataka once cited in an article he posted in this thread, upstream (reply #97)? Or, do you suppose that there is some other reason behind this that I'm just not seeing? Message 11705439 The excerpt on PP follows: ====== Apes and Paradigm Paralysis Start with a cage containing five apes. In the cage, hang a banana on a string and put stairs under it. Before long, an ape will go to the stairs and start to climb towards the banana. As soon as he touches the stairs, spray all of the apes with cold water. After a while, another ape makes an attempt with the same result---all the apes are sprayed with cold water. Pretty soon, when another ape tries to climb the stairs, the other apes will try to prevent it. Now, turn off the cold water. Remove one ape from the cage and replace it with a new one. The new ape sees the banana and wants to climb the stairs. To his horror, all of the other apes attack him. After another attempt and attack, he knows that if he tries to climb the stairs, he will be assaulted. Next, remove another of the original five apes and replace it with a new one. The newcomer goes to the stairs and is attacked. The previous newcomer takes part in the punishment with enthusiasm. Again, replace a third original ape with a new one. The new one makes it to the stairs and is attacked as well. Two of the four apes that beat him have no idea why they were not permitted to climb the stairs, or why they are participating in the beating of the newest ape. After replacing the fourth and fifth original apes, all the apes which have been sprayed with cold water have been replaced. Nevertheless, no ape ever again approaches the stairs. Why not? Because that's the way it's always been around here. *And that's how the ________ process works...* (fill in the blank with your favorite bureaucracy, e.g., Central Intelligence Agency, Department of Defense, Congressional Budget, etc.) ----- FTTH is becoming highly topical, not only here but in at least a half dozen other fora and mailing lists that I visit and participate in. I've been having some good dialog in the @home thread here in SI, but for some reason (actually we know what the reasons are, they're due to home's being blindfolded and hand-tied by their "partners"), the enthusiasm that I would have expected there, regarding FTTH, is all but extinct. Hopefully that will change over time, when Home begins to gain some freedoms. Regards, Frank Coluccio

To: ftth who wrote (1031)	1/30/2000 5:27:00 PM
From: Frank A. Coluccio	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 1782

re: The plot thickens, further. Robert Metcalfe speaks up on FTTH. From InfoWorld's 1/31/00 "From the Ether" column, written by Bob Metcalfe: infoworld.com [ Note: I was searching the Infoworld site for a possible retraction of the Sierra Power story last week which apparently caused a flap when their top management issued a denial. I found this article, instead. The article not only doesn't retract anything, it actually "adds" to the original story in several places, again mentioning Sierra prominently. ] Several parts of the following are bolded by yours truly. Enjoy, Frank Coluccio ----- "Faster than DSL or CTM, Fiber Optics to the Home: Build it and They Will Come" By Bob Metcalfe CABLE TELEVISION modems (CTMs) and digital subscriber lines (DSLs) are leading in the race to deploy residential broadband. But we all know the eventual winner will be fiber to the home (FTTH). So why not just leapfrog all that monopoly-owned legacy local-loop copper wire technology and go directly to fiber? Sooner rather than eventually. Last week, Ephraim Schwartz scooped me on the secret SpectraDyne consortium (see "Consortium to power up broadband," Jan. 24., page 1). He revealed that Sierra Pacific Power Company ( www.sierrapacific.com ) has been installing fibers along its rights of way to residential customers in Southern Nevada. Sources say that this summer, which would be a lot sooner than eventually, Sierra Pacific (along with Hewlett-Packard and Oracle) will roll out FTTH Internet at 10Mbps for $13.95 per month -- way faster and way cheaper than CTMs and DSLs. Telephone, television, and videoconferencing would be offered for additional fees based on routing and connection time. Initial provisioning would be at 155Mbps. Some 30 other public utilities are now in discussions with the group. It's interesting that a power company -- also a residential copper-based monopoly -- is installing local-loop fiber. And public utilities are the last companies I think of as dynamic competitors. But let's hope that at least half of this Sierra Pacific FTTH secret is true. Ownership issues, not technology, are pacing deployment of FTTH, says Brian Reid at Lucent's Bell Labs in Palo Alto, Calif. His solution is not to leave FTTH to cable, telephone, or power monopolies, all of which Palo Alto has, but to have Palo Alto or perhaps some independent agency operate a new FTTH monopoly, giving citizens open access to competitive Internet services. [[fac ed: If I'm not mistaken, Palo Alto is one of the municipalities that attempted a fiber to the home architecture of their own in the past year.]] I lived in and around The People's Republic of Palo Alto for 22 years and can confirm your suspicions that it's not a typical town. It's home to Stanford University, or as we in Maine call it, the Bowdoin of the West. It sits atop Silicon Valley. More than 80 percent of Palo Altans use the Internet from home. Thanks to Reid and his city comrades, Palo Alto already has a $2 million, 15-mile fiber-optic ring which gets high-speed Internet within a mile of almost all its citizens. The next step, long in coming, is an FTTH trial in one or two neighborhoods. According to Michael Eager, president of Palo Alto Fiber Network ( www.pafiber.net ), the city has been cautious about pursuing the proposed FTTH trial. And the trial has been steadfastly opposed by -- surprise! -- the local telephone monopoly. Contrary to a story in The Wall Street Journal Jan. 20, Palo Alto proponents say their FTTH trial will sign up plenty of citizen subscribers. They'll have to pay $1,200 for fiber installation plus $45 a month for 10Mbps, or $2,400 plus $100 per month for 100Mbps, plus Internet service provider charges. These prices are high compared to CTMs, DSLs, and SpectraDyne fibers, but, ahem, they're nothing compared to the costs of Palo Alto home ownership. Palo Alto's cable monopoly, which offers CTMs, is being acquired by AT&T. And there are DSLs galore, including from Palo Alto's telephone monopoly, now owned by SBC. So, citizens of Palo Alto have lots of broadband Internet access. But copper broadband can't compare to fiber's 10Mbps,100Mbps, or 1Tbps. So hurry up, Palo Alto, and try FTTH. The Wall Street Journal was right to question whether there's demand for FTTH broadband. I say build it, and they will come. To those who say CTMs and DSLs mean we don't have to dig up the streets to install FTTH, I say the obvious: We are digging the streets up anyway. CTMs vs. DSLs vs. FTTH -- let's root for FTTH. ------ Related articles: Utilities build fiber links infoworld.com Enterprise Toolbox: Broadband technology, rich-media apps will bring about positive organizational changes infoworld.com [This last url's message concerning rich media is posted in the following reply here in FCTF.]

To: ftth who wrote (1031)	1/30/2000 5:48:00 PM
From: Frank A. Coluccio	Respond to of 1782

re: Rich Media, Locationless Workspaces ----- From Infoworld: www2.infoworld.com "Broadband technology, rich-media apps will bring about positive organizational changes" By Maggie Biggs THE BUSINESS CASE for implementing broadband technologies is quite appealing. A new breed of rich-media applications, such as e-commerce systems that leverage interactive video and audio, could provide a competitive advantage for many companies. What's more, business-to-business connectivity costs should fall dramatically as broadband speeds achieve near parity with traditional, more expensive WAN connections. If current research proves anything close to accurate, broadband should definitely be on your radar. For example, recent Gartner Group data shows that by 2001 more than 60 percent of U.S. homes will be equipped with high-speed data services such as cable modems or DSL. Moreover, estimates show that by 2004 close to 9 million U.S. homes will have cable-modem service while another 7 million will have DSL service of some kind. These estimates provide a potent draw for companies that want to enhance customer experiences and business-partner relationships. And I believe this is where much of the forthcoming broadband discussion will center. Yet there is another, less visible aspect to broadband that can yield tangible corporate benefits. I'm speaking, of course, about integrating broadband technologies and rich-media applications into corporate culture and internal business processes. If one evaluates the expected influx of cable modems and DSL connections within the context of a traditional organizational structure, there are obvious benefits. For example, maintaining Web-based employee orientation materials using video content will prove more cost-effective than setting up monthly new-employee sessions in a classroom. Likewise, producing training materials or purchasing external training products and services will prove more efficient than sending employees to off-site education courses. Travel expenditures will decrease, and your staff can use interactive video to achieve a classroom-like experience. Traditional organizational structures have revolved primarily around location-specific activities and face-to-face communication. I believe broadband technologies will play a significant role in redefining what we now think of as the typical organizational structure. The availability of higher bandwidth, together with rich-media applications such as online collaboration and video-and audio-conferencing solutions, will in large part remove the requirement to maintain an organization that is dependent on specific locations. In fact, traditional structures may well become less efficient as companies that adopt the location-independent model respond more rapidly to market changes. Aside from competitive advantages, this new organizational model can bring other benefits. For example, less office space will be needed to support the tasks that require location-specific personnel. Staff productivity will likely increase as commute times decrease. Environmental conditions would also improve in the process. And employees would be able to better balance work and family life. Taking it one step further, your employees could be based "virtually" anywhere. As long as you can measure their workloads and insure their accountability, there is no reason why your virtual team might not include geographically dispersed persons. Your recruitment efforts could expand greatly and enable you to find the best and brightest minds to work toward corporate goals. However, adopting the locationless organizational model is not without its challenges. For example, Congress is already examining how a far-flung workforce will affect existing employment laws. Concern has also been raised over insuring employer-provided equipment in distributed settings. And many companies are struggling with supporting a distributed workforce. Yet these legal, insurance, and people-related issues can be resolved. The help desk itself might be a distributed workforce. [[fac ed: Two nights ago I watched a compelling congressional hearing on CSPAN regarding government purview into home based offices, telecommuting, etc. This particular airing discussed several issues, two in particular: (i) the rights of bureaucrats in the departments of OSH and Labor to enter into private home (offices) to investigate their compliance to occupational health and safety standards. The foregoing resulted from a missive sent by OSH that declared that OSH had the right to enter homes for the purpose of peforming inspections (it was played up big time on several Colorado Newspaper and government web sites); and (ii) the implications of issuing stock options to employees in High Tech firms due to the "unfair advantage" they may be gaining for being in the right place at the right time, vis workers in other sectors. Anyone else here catch this program besides myself? Any thoughts on those issues? Digression over, and back to the article:]] I've examined two types of corporate approaches to changing the organizational model with the onset of broadband and rich-media applications. In the first method, I've seen organizations attempt to implement these new technologies within the confines of a traditional structure. Many of these firms have implemented cable-modem or DSL connectivity for occasional teleworking employees. However, in many cases, that is where the effort stops. The wealth of communication and collaboration tools available is often passed over in favor of the traditional face-to-face communication. In this case, the remote connectivity becomes just one more function for IT to support. By contrast, I've observed several companies that have completely adopted the locationless model. At these firms, communication and collaboration are increased, business decisions are made more rapidly, and the distributed employees are very productive. At many companies, the leap to locationless working may be a real culture shock. The best way to examine this new organizational model is to try a pilot program with a small virtual team. The results may surprise you. Have you thought about the organization of the future yet? Write to me at maggie_biggs@infoworld.com.