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

To: Frank A. Coluccio who wrote (1163)	2/16/2000 2:13:00 AM
From: Raymond Duray	Respond to of 1782

Totally Off Topic? You be the Judge.... Hi Frank and Tread, Today we find that the level of volatility in the bond market is higher than it has been since the LTCM debacle in Sept/Oct '98. I am clueless as to what game is being played this time (only as to the particulars). I am in no doubt that a game is being played. Are any here on the thread clueful? Any associates? This is not something we should just brush off. Financial finagling foils flights of fancy in the brave now whirrled of web weaving. Don't let the boll (market) weevils wind you down. Please advise, FOTH

To: Frank A. Coluccio who wrote (1163)	2/16/2000 12:15:00 PM
From: ahhaha	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1782

Medin then explained how Excite@Home began with a vision of leveraging the existing cable infrastructure to provide high-speed, fully integrated multi-platform interactive services. But to accomplish that Excite@Home had to address numerous challenges, including: How to provide high-performance Internet service without destroying the Internet? The question mark is correct, but this wasn't and couldn't be an objective for the company. How to scale and evolve the system to millions of homes at an affordable price? Affordability can't be a corporate objective. You can't start out with such an assumption. You start out trying to build something that serves a need and you ignore affordability. That is determined by users. If it isn't affordable, then you either bring its cost down to a point where demand justifies your expenditures to provide it, or you find a way to increase demand within a more narrowly defined market. How to proactively manage reliable network communications to the user? This is part of ATHM's problem. Proactive management is driven by the market place rather than from the company. ATHM is reacting proactively to its own agenda. How to assure quality of service to the customers, even when the Internet is highly variable? This is beyond the purview of ATHM as long as they remain chained to the MSO model and don't expand into the cloud. How does one expand into the cloud while building a private off-cloud network? Medin needs to address this, not modem channel crunching. Medin explained how Excite@Home designed its network to meet those challenges in a way that still made broadband affordable. No, it designed its network in order to work within the MSo infrastructure and is now bagged by that antiquating model. Further, the model is morphing into something hostile to the private backbone infrastructure, so ATHM is at odds with both the rest of the network community and with its own entrapment in the last mile component. Medin then discussed two challenges that must be overcome to maximize the value that cable broadband networks can bring to its customers; the provisioning gating factor and the challenge of managing multiple ISPs on the cable network. This is nothing but a superfluous distraction. If he thinks this is the issue for the engineering side of the company, he's still in 1998. Medin described how Excite@Home was working towards customer self-install, which would dramatically speed the adoption of broadband services by consumers. Ridiculous, superfluous, deflective, and irrelevant. The issue as Frank pointed out is the last mile, not the last yard. That's why there exists a thread for that. ...Medin said, "(enable multiple ISPs) is technologically possible. But it does present significant challenges, particularly if one wants to maintain the ability of the cable broadband efforts to continue to provide a high quality of service at a low price." He's doing no more than AOL is in that he's hiding from risk taking. AOL reversed their dedication to OA and Medin is hiding the fact that the company is afraid of competition and so he's waving the saber of how much it will cost you when he means, how much it will cost ATHM. He isn't seeing that there is far more revenue in "proactively" engaging other ISPs. He's hiding the incompetence of Excite. Medin discussed some of the technological challenges that need to be addressed to enable the cable networks to support multiple ISPs. Today's standards based modem technology needs to be redesigned to adequately partition the cable network capacity in an efficient manner amongst different ISP's and services. Preposterous. He's addressing what last year's competitors thought ATHM should be doing. He's adopted an approach that is unworkable and unproductive. The competitors know that because they built that hypothetically in order to appeal to the natural socialism that still pervades the US. It's inconceivable that Medin would buy into a failed strategy that only exists on toilet paper. OA choice does not mean the ability for the user to change daily. You don't need multiple channels going to the STB/desktop. You may need the CO or headend ability to switch what is on your high speed data channel. It is important to have this capability to continue to deliver a reliable broadband experience to the consumer. Provisioning and other OSS functions, which are currently under stress to support the large installation volumes that exist today, would have to be designed to support other ISP's consumer installations. I guess he assumes the HFC model of rickety forever. 1998 won't play any more, Milo. He is co-opted by the screwball nature of ATHM ownership. DOCSIS standards for cable modems need to be revised to support the transport of multiple ISPs in a scalable way. It's important to implement a standard approach so that economies of scale can be maintained and consumers can benefit from lower equipment prices and easier installation. You always know when a company is losing when they start crying for standards. It's a protection scheme. DOCSIS isn't worth the paper it's written on. Standards aren't relevant until a technology matures. Well, maybe he's right. Rickety has matured. No, it's senile. Network management systems have to be designed that enable proper customer service support while protecting the various ISP's customers information from other providers. More obfuscation. We need this and that in order to live up to society's demands for more fairness and socialism. This problem can be solved with little effort, so why does he mention it? These remarks are the sign of a sinking ship. This isn't the same Milo of a year ago.

To: Frank A. Coluccio who wrote (1163)	2/18/2000 3:35:00 AM
From: E. Davies	Respond to of 1782

Truck rolls, my foot. I've never had Compuserve or Prodigy or AOL pull up to my driveway. Why the difference between these models? Why indeed. I've been trying to get a handle on this anywhere I can and thought I'd put it forth here as well. What is is that is taking these people so long to eliminate the truck roll? Is it rusting connectors? Is it software install? Provisioning? What the heck is that and how could it possibly so hard to automate? I'm at a loss how they can find this tolerable. Regarding eliminating the black wire: 1) Would fiber eliminate truck rolls? Somehow I doubt it. Thats not even including the obvious fact that you either run the last 100 yards over that nasty coax stuff or you need to install new wires. 2) How much are ATHM engineers spending energy on the low level physical issues of coax? If its a lot then your point is very valid. Not however if most of their energy is aimed at higher level issues beyond the wire (the wire is supposed to be run by the MSO after all) Eric