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Technology Stocks : LAST MILE TECHNOLOGIES - Let's Discuss Them Here -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: MikeM54321 who wrote (6347)	2/2/2000 9:22:00 AM
From: Elsewhere	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 12823

Comments by Esther Dyson were most accurate. She stated that most of Europe still doesn't get it. These "Europe doesn't get it" comments are ridiculous. Germany started a national videotext-based data service in 1984 which already offered all current "e-commerce activities", just without the hype. I ordered books online many years before Amazon was founded. I have been banking electronically since 1989, before the WWW protocols were published. Who invented HTML? Tim Berners-Lee, at CERN, in Europe: Father of World Wide Web Wins $100,000 Prize Thursday December 16 6:14 PM ET dailynews.yahoo.com Who invented the first real OS which could become a threat to the still laughable Windows? Linus Torvalds, born in Finland. Recently Transmeta followed, finally a processor without the bloated x86 legacy: Transmeta takes wraps off Crusoe January 19, 2000 10:52 AM PT zdnet.com Deutsche Telekom and Mannesmann have attracted nearly 10 million new wireless customers in 1999. (That would be 30 million people in the USA.) Look at ailing Dell in comparison to booming Nokia. NOK sold 73 million phones in 1999: Nokia Posts Sharp Rise In Profit, Wireless Sales February 2, 2000 interactive.wsj.com Europe leaves the wireline Net euphoria to the USA and directly turns to wireless Internet. Witness history's biggest corporate takeover battle between VOD and Mannesmann. UMTS/3G are on the horizon. So, dear Mrs. Dyson, in my humble opinion the race has just started.

To: MikeM54321 who wrote (6347)	2/7/2000 12:42:00 PM
From: Elsewhere	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 12823

Davos again I am a subscriber to compaq.com, an inspiring list by Jeffrey R. Harrow who is a Senior Consulting Engineer at CPQ. He wrote the following about his Davos trip: The Internet is an incredibly vast resource, replete with both the good, and the bad, and the useless -- and the unbelievably valuable. No wonder the word Opportunity is written all over it. But the Internet is more than just data. As I write this sitting in the Geneva airport, having downloaded my mail this morning over a 50K dial-up connection (far faster than I get from most phones in the U.S.), I'm watching a teenager standing at an America Online kiosk chatting with her online friends. It doesn't matter that she's an ocean away from her home and her friends; she seems right at home. Indeed, her friends might live an ocean away from her, perhaps only a short distance from where she's now standing in Switzerland, and she might not even know. But as she waits to transport her atoms home across the ocean the slow way, her Emailed thoughts and feelings precede her. Socially, for business, and for commerce, the Internet banishes many aspects of time and distance, and many old "boundaries." As long as you have a connection to this next "utility," the world is a very small place. Europe may be trailing the U.S. in Internet usage and Ecommerce by a year or so, but the dot-com writing seemed plainly on the wall to me -- and on trams and buses and billboards -- and on the minds of European businesspeople I spoke with. Especially as free Internet access seems poised to vault the Channel for the continent, and as Forrester Research expects European online brokerage accounts to climb from 1.3 million this year to 14 million by 2004 (http://www.forrester.nl/ER/Press/Release/0,1769,225,FF.html), a repeat of the U.S.'s dot-com love affair seems very possible indeed. By the way, Europe can also give those of us in the U.S. a good indication of what WE have in-store: It's the "W" word -- "Wireless." During my stay in Europe, I did meet a person who didn't have a cellular phone. One person -- although there may be a few others. I felt just a bit naked as my trusty U.S. cell phone became mute beyond our borders, while Europeans seamlessly roamed from country to country, never missing a call or message or page. And public phone booths boasted in large letters that not only will they let you make a phone call (if you're phone-less, like me), but they will let you send Internet Email, as well as text messages to cell phones, from their newly-added keyboards. (Come ON, U.S. cell phone companies -- one global standard would be a boon for everyone's business, considering that IGI Consulting anticipates 830 million wireless Internet access devices by 2005, and "... more people... accessing the Internet by mobile phones than by PCs" as early as 2003! (http://www.emarketer.com/estats/012400_wire.html) Europe, with its common GSM standard, will likely usher in "3G" technologies (with their 2 megabit/second data to pockets) years before it happens in the U.S.' fragmented cellular environment. And fast wireless data will surely usher in many new Opportunities. - pathfinder.com. We in the U.S. would do well to watch the wireless goings-on across the pond -- those who do will have a "leg up" on tomorrow. Well, it's been a great, and instructive (for me), trip. Now I'd best get MY atoms to the boarding gate...