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

To: Frank A. Coluccio who wrote (1070)	2/2/2000 8:13:00 PM
From: ftth	Respond to of 1782

Not only that but they're so unified in their responses, across companies. "Just enough and just in time." Trouble is, the just-in-time mentality only works in an environment when the next step can be implemented at the snap of a finger. When they finally realize it's no longer enough, and just START on the next "incremental" upgrade, it will be obsolete on deployment. Oh well, I've all but given up on the cable co's leading the charge, and they've all but said they intend to be followers, not leaders. This comment from that article says it all: >>But, it also brings with it some scary unknowns...will future revenues justify the initial capital investment If their lack of action is based on fear of the unknown future, they have no business being in a growth business. Seems to me they HAVE to believe this scenario will happen and they HAVE to make it happen or they have no future. They'll be leap-frogged. Plus, at the rate they're going there will be several waves of these "initial capital investments" so their fears may become a self-fulfiling prophecy. Another related article: AT&T Plans Distributed CMTS Architecture LightWire Roadmap Calls for Integration of DOCSIS CMTS Functionality into Mini-Fiber Nodes FEBRUARY 01, 2000 At the Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers (SCTE) Emerging Technologies 2000 conference January 11-13, Oleh Sniezko, director of engineering, for AT&T Broadband & Internet Services, provided an update on the company's LightWire mini-fiber node (mFN) architecture. During the presentation, Sniezko also expressed AT&T's interest in building a distributed DOCSIS cable modem termination system (CMTS) platform by integrating CMTS functionality directly into mFNs. According to Sniezko, if everything proceeds according to plan, as much as 80 percent of AT&T's broadband network would employ a distributed CMTS architecture within five years, a development that would have major implications for DOCSIS CMTS and fiber-optic product players. LightWire is a passive optical network (PON) network architecture that uses mFNs to overcome current HFC limitations: high maintenance and powering costs, plus large shared upstream contention domains for data and voice services. LightWire uses fiber transport from a regional cable headend, through "transparent" distribution hubs to MuxNodes feeding mFNs serving 50 to 70 homes passed. Each home would be within 1,500 feet of the mFN, making the final coaxial cable run short enough to eliminate active plant components, boosting network capacity and reliability, while reducing operating costs. The architecture also improves upstream transmission performance by reducing ingress noise and the number of homes sharing available bandwidth, as well as offering the ability to increase raw RF capacity. Finally, LightWire is a more efficient platform for powering customer premise equipment (CPE) via the network, which is critical for offering telephone services with lifeline reliability. AT&T began testing the first phase of LightWire in Salt Lake City in October 1999 and is encouraged by the results. Now AT&T is eyeing phase two of LightWire, which calls for the integration of DOCSIS CMTS functionality into mFNs starting in 2001. In an interesting turn of events, immediately following Sniezko's presentation at SCTE, Terry Wright, chief technology officer of C- Cor.Net, made his own presentation which claimed the distributed CMTS concept has been patented by his company.