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Technology Stocks : The New Qualcomm - a S&P500 company -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Eric L who wrote (6271)	2/5/2000 4:18:00 PM
From: uel_Dave	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 13582

Eric, another CDN Wireless Article ( I will have to check into your CDMA 2000 question re: NT ) ------------------- Wireless the new frontier by Mathew Ingram - Saturday, February 5, 2000 The Internet? That's old news. Even your Aunt Ruth has e-mail now, and your neighbour is already talking about whether he should get high-speed cable or ADSL Internet access. The new frontier is the Internet, but with one key word added, and that word is "wireless." The new land grab when it comes to the Internet is taking place on the airwaves. Anyone looking for signs of the market's red-hot interest in wireless would find plenty of evidence in last week's IPO of Toronto-based 724 Solutions, which blazed a trail up the charts in a wildly-oversubscribed offering. The company's key investors (and customers) include Citigroup, which owns 21.8 per cent, as well as Bank of America and Bank of Montreal. The company's stock went public at $26 (U.S.) on Nasdaq, climbed as high as $103.87 and closed recently at about $90, giving 724 a market capitalization of more than $3-billion. The company's software allows banks to provide on-line banking, stock trading and other services over a mobile phone or portable computer -- services that the Bank of Montreal is already rolling out. Another hot wireless IPO came a week ago from interWave Communications,based in Bermuda, which went public at $13 a share and rose as high as $41. It closed recently at around $35, giving it a value of more than $1.5-billion. Nortel Networks owns about 22 per cent of the company, and is also a customer. Hong Kong conglomerate Hutchinson Whampoa is also an investor in interWave, which makes what it calls a wireless "network in a box." Felix Lin, CEO of AvantGo, told Upside magazine recently that the wireless market is "the Second Coming of the Internet." San Mateo, Calif.-based AvantGo provides news, weather and sports to users of handheld devices such as the Palm Pilot from 3Com. "This is the Wild West -- wireless makes the Internet look tame," Donna Oliva, CEO of w-Trade Technologies,told Upside. w-Trade is a New York-based company similar to 724 that provides wireless banking and stock-trading for phones and handheld devices. Other wireless companies that have seen their shares soar include Sierra Wireless,a Richmond, B.C. company that makes wireless modems. Its shares have climbed from $5 (Canadian) in the fall to a recent close of around $130, giving it a market value of more than $1.8-billion. Sierra has announced key deals with Sprint PCS and AT&T, and also has a contract to provide modems for use with a U.S. wireless networking service called Ricochet. Ricochet is owned by Metricom, a company whose backers include MCI-Worldcom and Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. Metricom plans to spend billions of dollars setting up wireless access in dozens of U.S. cities, for use with laptops and handhelds. Its stock has climbed from $20 (U.S.) last fall to a recent close of $90, giving it a value of roughly $2.5-billion. Another proposed wireless Internet and e-mail network is called OmniSky, a joint venture between 3Com Corp. and Maryland-based Aether Systems. Aether is similar to 724 Solutions in that it offers stock trading and other services such as bill payment over phones or Palm Pilots. Aether's stock has been as high as $144 since it went public in November. It closed recently at $124, giving it a market capitalization of about $3.5-billion. Yet another venture aimed at providing a wireless network for use with phones or handhelds is called GOAmerica,a New Jersey-based company that has filed for a public offering later this year. One of its main backers is a venture capital fund run by Adam Dell, who happens to be the younger brother of billionaire Dell Computer founder Michael Dell. Adam Dell has said he sees GOAmerica eventually becoming the "America Online of wireless." Software behemoth Microsoft,meanwhile, has a joint venture with cellphone company Qualcomm called Wireless Knowledge which plans to deliver a personalized calendar and e-mail to a cell phone or Palm Pilot. The company has done trials with companies like AT&T and British Telecom, but has missed several launch dates. Not to be outdone, Sun Microsystems announced a similar project with America Online subsidiary Netscape to offer wireless applications. In an attempt to create some uniform standards, a group of companies including Ericsson, Nokia and Motorola have gotten behind something called the Wireless Application Protocol (WAP). The company that developed the standard -- and also makes an Internet browser for use on handheld devices -- is called Phone.com. It went public in June at $16 a share and has climbed to a recent close of around $120, giving it a market value of almost $8-billion. You may think getting stock quotes and paying bills is all you will ever do over the slow connections that phones and handhelds offer, but analysts see more in the future. AT&T's new digital network will run at 384 kilobits a second, six times faster than most home Internet connections. And in a recent test of its high-speed technology, Calgary-based Wi-LAN sent data at 30 megabits a second -- to a car going 100 kilometres an hour.