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

To: Frank A. Coluccio who wrote (6349)	2/2/2000 12:30:00 PM
From: MikeM54321	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 12823

Jochen and Frank- I have some detailed stats about Internet usage in Europe that were most telling. I'll post later after I dig them up. They are in my 10 hour flying time reading materials stack. But I believe the comments by Gates, Case, and Dyson, were construed as Frank mentions. Not that the citzenry doesn't get it, but the political system and it's intertwining with the telecom monopolies. Although I have to say, Dyson did kind of/sort of direct her comments as meaning the, "people." But I probably shouldn't speak for her. Sorry if I did. In the European edition of Newsweek, I did read a very good article on how Sweden has pulled themselves out of the economic morass they were in a few years back. Now it's the hotbed of high tech in Euroland. Very much like Silicon Valley is to the US. And the other European exception, I feel, is the Netherlands. They are very much taking the lead in expanding the Internet infrastructure for their citizens and Euroland. But the rest of the members of the EU appear to be tied up in monopolies/politics and this hinders the development of the Internet. I believe Italy is the biggest laggard in Internet usage. But like Frank said, it's certainly not a race. The World Economic Forum was simply cautioning Europe that the importance of the Internet to a healthy economy cannot be overlooked. --MikeM(From Florida)

To: Frank A. Coluccio who wrote (6349)	2/2/2000 1:20:00 PM
From: Elsewhere	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 12823

Frank, I was aware of France Telecom's Minitel offering of the early 80s when it was launched and followed it for some time, but not the German equivalent which you cited (videotext). Would you mind expanding on the latter offering for a moment, giving us a better historical perspective of what it consisted of? Bildschirmtext (Btx) started in 1984 as a national data service with 1200/75 bps dial-up access, i.e. 1200 bps for receiving and 75 bps for sending. This sounds funny today but was state-of-the-art then when many people still used an acoustic coupler (300 bps). There was a central IBM host in Ulm. The display was character-based with few graphics though it was possible to create small pictures by redefining the bit map of a reserved character subset. Btx never became as popular as Minitel which owed its wide adoption to the public subsidy of terminals. But nevertheless Btx subscriber numbers increased over the years. When the success of TCP/IP became obvious Deutsche Telekom introduced PPP dial-in with a gateway to the old network thus maintaining backward compatibility while adding WWW and using the existing Btx customer base as a core for Internet subscribers. Some of the Btx offers are still useful; pages designed for 1200 bps just fly with 64 kbps (ISDN) and are faster than most Web sites with broadband access. Frequent traders who are customers of the most popular German online broker, consors.de, prefer the Btx site as the fastest of all access methods. Getting back on point, would you argue that the PTTs themselves have "gotten it" for a long time, if we must use that idiom? I don't know non-German PTTs well enough to comment on them but I have followed Deutsche Telekom (NYSE:DT). Some points: - Increase in ISDN customers from 1993: 0.3 to 1999: 13.3 million - Increase in wireless customers from 1995: 1.8 to 1999: 9.1 million (partial float of cellular unit T-Mobil planned later this year) - Increase in Internet customers from 1995: 0.8 to 1999: 4.2 million. T-Online is Europe's leading ISP far ahead of AOL (partial float also this year) The Wall Street Journal Interactive Edition January 26, 2000 Deutsche Telekom Plans IPO In Lift for Europe's Tech Market This dot-com is going to make waves. interactive.wsj.com - Roll-out of DSL broadband access in cities - About 100,000 miles of fiber at the end of 1997 - Decrease of workforce from 1994: 231,000 to 1999: 172,900 - Decline of long-distance phone charges by up to 90% - Decrease of long-term debt in the last four years by about $30 billion - Share price increase from 14 euro in 11/96 (IPO) to about 75 euro currently DT's weakest aspect is the international strategy. Global One, the joint venture with Sprint and France T‚l‚com, was a disaster: Global One joint venture collapses By John Borland, Staff Writer, CNET News.com January 26, 2000, 4:00 p.m. PT news.cnet.com There are persistent rumors about potential acquisitions/mergers, SBC and Cable & Wireless being frequently named candidates. But so far nothing has materialized. This article has been published 15 minutes ago: Deutsche Telekom now Europe's most valuable firm Wednesday February 2, 1:01 pm Eastern Time biz.yahoo.com So while DT isn't as lean and mean as an optical start-up it has improved considerably and is a useful case study how important a good regulatory framework is and what kind of dynamics are set free by a liberalized market and competition. Regards, Jochen