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Technology Stocks : TeraBeam -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: D.Austin who wrote (118)	3/14/2000 12:23:00 PM
From: Rob Preuss	Respond to of 227

Interesting post from the Yahoo message boards... Terabeam may not need roof rights to build out to the end customer, but they have all the other problems and issues that hub and spoke architecture companies like WCII and TGNT have, and they will have some new problems that WCII and TGNT don't have -> For example: o) They have to have a hub on the same side of a building that a customer has their windows on. Not all customers have 360 degree access around their building and not all buildings have windows on all sides. o) They have to worry about HEAT dissipation problems. Try to align lasers between two buildings in Phoenix on a hot day and you don't have to worry about rain fade but you instead have to worry about heat fade from the rising heat waves. o) They have to worry about temporary obstructions - everything from window washers to trees growing in the way. Granted WCII, TNGT and friends have to worry about such things also - stories of blimps going between two buildings come to mind. o) They need much more complicated OSS systems to track the angles and alignments of all the lasers in order to track the growth of the city around the network. When you are going from one roof top to another, you have less opportunity for a building to grow up in between the two points than you do when you are going between two windows someplace in a building. Point to Multi-point OSS systems are not something that you can buy off the shelf these days... They will need to develop that in house, and it will take a very long time to get it right. o) More complicated hub designs. When you are going from building roof to building roof you can usually hit all the client buildings from the hub building from one small common area on the hub buildings roof. With the laser technology you either need to build out multiple areas on the roof (because of the need to point some lasers downwards rather than mostly parallel to the ground, or worse yet you have to build out multiple areas inside the building to shoot the lasers through the windows. And last, and most importantly, (I believe it has been mentioned already here) it's one thing to have a killer technology and build a product around that, and a completely different thing to use that killer technology to build a service company. They don't have (yet) the people or money to build out anything that could compete with WCII, TGNT, NXLK, etc. To build the companies and networks that they are buiding isn't just about getting roof rights, it's about building the systems, developing the processes, attracting the human talent, and obtaining the proper capital to make it all work. Let's not forget building a sales force to sell this "new technology" and the obstacles that the customers will put up - talk about people having a hard time selling wirless radio access, laser access is a few steps further out. Additionally, if Terabeam becomes viable (especially if it becomes "distruptive") then you'll see companies like Lucent/ Canon/etc will put major development into their competitive fiberless optics to compete with whatever Terabeam has that they don't, let alone may just acquire them for the technology if it would take too long to develop in house. In conclusion, they seem to have a neat technology, and it would be fun building a company around it, but they won't be putting WCII, TGNT, or NXLK out of business any time soon.

To: D.Austin who wrote (118)	3/14/2000 1:35:00 PM
From: Frank A. Coluccio	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 227

Speaking about 110 stories, I recently attended a wedding reception on top of the WTC in NY, at Windows on the World. One of the best that I've ever attended. The only notable drawback of the evening was this fluffy grayness outside every window, since we were sitting in the middle of a cloud for the entire duration of the affair. Never saw a single opening, or any semblance of night lights on the town, which was very disappointing for some who'd never seen the city from that awesome perspective before. Maybe next time. One thing that I did notice, though... the windows were clean. -g-