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Technology Stocks : 3Com Corporation (COMS) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mehrdad Arya who wrote (41518)	3/8/2000 8:51:00 AM
From: Sawtooth	Respond to of 45548

China to shell out $1.0 bln on Internet backbone (mentions COMS) Mar 7 2000 21:42PM By Lee Chyen Yee SHANGHAI, March 8 (Reuters) - Chinese telecommunications operators say they will pump nearly $1 billion into Internet infrastructure this year, signalling increased competition in the sector and lucrative contracts for foreign equipment suppliers. Officials with China Telecom <0941.HK>, China Unicom, China Netcom and China Jitong -- the four data carriers in the country's state-owned industry -- said this week they were spending heavily to soup up creaky infrastructure and spur sluggish Web speeds. Foreign equipment makers are already reaping the rewards. U.S.-based Lucent Technologies Inc said last week it had won contracts worth more than $100 million from China Telecom, China Unicom and China Netcom. Analysts said network hardware providers including Cisco Systems , 3Com Corp and AsiaInfo Holdings Inc -- whose shares jumped 300 percent on its Nasdaq listing last week -- were also aggressively marketing their wares. "China will want leading edge technology as it builds its next generation networks," said David Michael, vice president and director of China e-commerce practice at the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) in Hong Kong. "That provides an important opportunity for those overseas players who have that technology," he said. FIRMING UP AN ACHING BACKBONE The country's dominant telecom provider China Telecom said it would spend more than one billion yuan ($120 million) this year to expand its existing digital network. "We are focusing on developing ATM and IP networks," said Ye Yongdong, deputy chief engineer of the company's data communication bureau. ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode) is a high-speed technology which blends data, voice and video in a single pipe. IP (Internet Protocol) is a cheaper technology developed for data, but it is still unclear when it will be able to handle multimedia traffic efficiently, analysts said. Number two telecoms provider China Unicom said it was spending 5.6 billion yuan to build its ATM and IP network which will begin services in the first half of this year. A spokesman from China Jitong said his company would be improving its current IP and ATM network, but declined to give a figure for investment. China's newest player in the sector, China Netcom Corp, said it was investing 500 million yuan to roll out its IP network, scheduled to start operating in the third quarter. FROM DIRT ROAD TO SUPER HIGHWAY China's public network is already creaking from traffic generated by nine million users, and official figures are predicting 60 million Internet users by 2005. Internet speeds are notoriously slow, with surfers sometimes waiting several minutes to download a single Web page. "When you're waiting that long, the super information highway is more like a dirt road," said Matthew McGravey, e-commerce strategist at International Data Corp (IDC) Hong Kong. The changing habits of China's Internet users are also stretching the network thin, with an increasing number of people packing the bandwidth with software and music files. "Just the ability to see basic sites is going to be hampered by lack of capacity at the backbone," Eric Rosenblum, chief operating officer of Internet company ChinaNow.com. A robust digital infrastructure would also leave China prepared for foreign competition when it gradually opens up its telecommunications sector upon entry to the World Trade Organisation (WTO), expected this year, analysts said. (US$ = 8.28 yuan) money.go.com