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

To: MikeM54321 who wrote (6762)	3/30/2000 9:22:00 AM
From: MikeM54321	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 12823

Re: A Brave New World- Sans Last Mile?? Thread- Events are happening in the multimedia world that's sound pretty exciting on first glance. I listened to the entire broadcast of Lucent's new GeoVideo Networks launch(among other similar launches). It was pretty exciting and covered the evolution of the PSTN starting in 1900. And of course, led into the vision of where they see how GeoVideo plans to take the network into the next generation of fully interactive, HDTV, VOD, Video Learning, Video Conferencing, blah, blah, blah. But, as usual, it's quite humorous to listen to all the excitement. Humorous because it lacks a tiny<g> detail- A Last Mile broadband pipe. It was funny listening to how they plan on developing this high speed backbone connecting ALL the cities in the United States(hmmm..I thought that was a done deal. Too much bandwidth, blah, blah, blah..). Then all their super hubs sprinkled throughout the entire nationwide network. Sounds very similar to Qwest recent announcements about it's high speed data centers. BUT, when they get down to the Last Mile, they fall FLAT on their face. Here's why. Supposedly there are 4.6 million commercial buildings in the United States. Only 1% of them have fiber. There are 100 million households in the United States. Let's see...hmmm....about 0% have fiber run to them.<g> So it's almost laughable to hear their vision of their multimedia, fully interactive, 15 video streams simultaneously running, on the desktop, etc., etc.. Their target market, their, "extremely," exciting new uses of this extremely exciting technology, blah, blah,... Everything sounds so good until they get to the Last Mile. Here's how they sum that up. "Oh, by the way, we will get fiber to the customer. Imagine how exciting this all is." I kid you not. That is as far as their Last Mile comments got in their product launch. They say they are going to be using MFNX fiber network. Okay sounds good. But what about the 250,000,000 customers that won't be connected via fiber to MFNX plant for at least the next ten years? Here's the press release: lucent.com Here's another exciting cartoon website, but sans Last Mile details: geovideo.net ...nice cartoons, but no factual details, except for the MFNX reference to the local loop. It takes up, I'm not kidding, one single sentence. If I'm not mistaken AT&T just spent $102 billion dollars on that Last Mile problem. And all Lucent/MFNX devoted to it was one sentence. Tell me if you can find any details about any connection to eyeballs/ears. It's quite humorous because you won't find any. It's even funnier to see/hear all their, "Demos," in their launch, sans a plan for a connection to their end user. Hmmm...small detail I guess, right? Well my main point is, all this fluff above is exactly why I think the Last Mile investing has got to be one of the most exciting sectors to be in positioned in. Currently it's ancient stuff. But right on the other side of the Last Mile, is bleeding edge technology trying to bust down the door. -MikeM(From Florida)

To: MikeM54321 who wrote (6762)	3/30/2000 12:01:00 PM
From: lml	Respond to of 12823

Hi Mike: Can't spend too much time here right now. Couple comments. First, I think the USW VDSL was rolled out in a brand new subdivision in Phoenix that received a lot of press as one of the first "fully wired" communities. I believe USW laid FTTC there, so IMHO, its provisioning of VDSL, while important, is not much of a milestone unless its over copper for a reasonable length to indicate more widespread deployment. Second, search the SBC site Project Pronto press releases. I recall one of them declaring that SBC will be provisioning delivery of video services over copper "by the end of 2000." I found the timetable a bit aggressive and could only conclude that the language likely referred to a few particular test markets. But bottom line, its where SBC is headed. They intend to deliver video over copper pair & compete with the franchised MSOs for bundled services. They will not allow the likes of T and their cable broadband strategy to usurp their customer base. These are two rather large companies with rather large footprints in the US, with SBC now laying the foundation to expand its footprint. In sum, look to the big boys for guidance as to where this is all headed. Gotta go. Apologize for any typos.