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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 (6791)	4/7/2000 11:09:00 AM
From: Frank A. Coluccio	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 12823

Hello Mike, re: ATM in the local loop, here's an article that may avail itself to some degree of perspective on the importance and staying power of ATM in the last mile. It's from this week's (4/4/0) Sounding Board Magazine (copied below, for posterity): soundingboardmag.com [[BTW, I commend the entire issue of Sounding Board this week as being highly relevant to a number of topics which I hope to be commenting on both here and over in the Coluccio thread later today, or over the weekend. In particular, see the VoDSL and IP Telephony over Cable articles, and the effects of recent mergers on previous plans to introduce VoIP/IP Telephony by some of the major players.]] On another note, and as relates to some of ALA's other last mile aspirations, be on the lookout for them to begin announcing some last mile Ethernet directions, possibly GbE, as would be supported in large part by their acquisition of Packet Engines, not too long ago. IMO. FAC ---------ATM article begins: *"ATM: The Clear Choice for Local Access"* By Brough Turner Until a few years ago, ATM was promoted as the long-term answer for voice and data convergence--the ultimate networking protocol. Until 1995, this made sense. ATM is a scalable technology. It was designed from the outset to support voice, video and data packets on the same wire (or fiber, or wireless channel). ATM has virtual circuits. It supports very high-speed switching and provides QoS guarantees. Unfortunately, development and deployment of ATM took too long. First, it failed to take over the desktop, succumbing to the lower cost and ubiquity of Ethernet. Then, the web and IP took the world by storm. IP became the dominant network protocol. Now, all applications run on IP, and IP runs on every kind of transport. So there is nothing on the horizon to challenge IP as the dominant networking technology. If we forget ATM's earlier pretensions and just consider ATM as a transport for IP, it's very good. It's also very scalable. In fact, when the growth of the Internet exploded in 1996 and 1997, ATM was the only technology on the market that could provide the optical transmission rates (155mbps and 622mbps) IP backbone providers wanted. There are other choices for high-speed IP, but ATM continues to grow in the backbone because it is the only transport mechanism that can provide different classes of service on the same fabric. With ATM, a backbone provider can combine IP and legacy voice traffic on the same network without interference. Perhaps more significant for the coming all-IP world, ATM's QoS guarantees can support differential IP services, given there is networking equipment intelligent enough to map the IP-based application flow to the proper ATM class of service. This means you can run VoIP traffic together with mission-critical IP applications and bulk file transfers on the same IP over ATM network, without interference or loss of voice quality during file transfers. Many IP networks are built on top of ATM networks. However, with DWDM and new fiber networks providing vast amounts of bandwidth for the backbone, a new generation of IP carriers is bypassing ATM and providing guaranteed IP service levels by overprovisioning. They are throwing bandwidth at the problem, expecting the IP differential services (DiffServ) architecture and other emerging IP QoS technology to provide eventually the capabilities that ATM provides today. These new carriers' backbone IP routers connect directly to the fiber network without the need for, or the expense of, an ATM layer. While ATM backbones are still growing, ATM is about to be eclipsed again. There is one place where ATM is an excellent match, and that is local access. Whatever happens to other ATM markets, ATM has a strong future as the transport protocol for the access loop--the last mile. Here, there's a dearth of fiber, and the copper cables are owned by entrenched monopolies. Local access remains the most expensive part of any WAN. This is where small and medium-sized businesses can benefit by combining voice and mission-critical data with e-mail and file transfers on a single T1 or xDSL access line. ATM supports this, thus dramatically reducing costs in the one area of the network where bandwidth is most expensive. Two years ago, T1 ATM access was hard to find, but now ATM is available on both T1 and xDSL from multiple service providers in North America. The market is growing rapidly and will continue to do so for many years. While there is an inexorable trend to move everything onto IP, legacy services never die. It is safe to predict 15 years from now there still will be 9600 baud data circuits, X.25 and a wide variety of private leased lines. The most efficient way to provision these legacy services in the access loop is ATM. In the long term, ATM will be superceded by native IP mechanisms. Fiber will reach the local loop and IP DiffServ will challenge ATM for QoS. But it will be more than five years before anything impacts the growth of ATM in the access loop. Brough Turner is senior vice president, chief technology officer and co-founder of Natural MicroSystems Corp. (www.nmss.com). He can be reached at rbt@nmss.com.

To: MikeM54321 who wrote (6791)	5/14/2000 11:48:00 AM
From: MikeM54321	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 12823

Re: Alcatel(sym:ALA) 2000 Q1 CC Notes Thread- I listened to the entire broadcast of ALA's earnings CC twice. Important information with regards to three last mile technologies; xDSL, LMDS, mobile wireless Internet. Apparently there is a lot of internal growth at ALA. Driven mainly by xDSL rollouts. But I somewhat question the figures because there was no mention of the weakness in the Euro while doing yr/yr revenue comparisons. And I'm not sure how to read it strictly from a Euro basis. Obviously if they did receive USD in revenues, then convert back to Euros, it's considerably more than just one year ago comparisons. Apparently no analyst is saying to much about this aspect. But one can't argue the DSL line growth figures. That is substantial no matter how you cut it. ALA was the company I mentioned immediately upstream that deployed 1 million DSL lines in Q1 alone. ALA is estimating for 2000, 30% top line and 60% growth in net. And about EUR 1 billion in operating profits for the year 2000. -MikeM(From Florida) PS Here's a few 99Q4 Notes: Message 12790512 Here's some recent news about LMDS that I'm finding quite interesting for it's future potential: Message 13117054 Message 13445747 And here's a summary of a bunch of older urls about ALA in general: Message 12581327 ******************************** xDSL -ALA has installed a whooping 1 million CO lines in Q1! -66% US, 22% Europe, 14% Asia -CPE has delivered 300K units Q1 -ALA has 25% of worldwide market in CPE -ALA is estimating they will install 4 to 6 million xDSL lines in 2000(new lines) -80% of which is ADSL flavored -Estimates total(all players) 50 to 70 million xDSL lines within 5 years -Litespan grew 80% in Q1 US market -ASAM product can do 1,296 lines per rack -Have 50% of the DSL chipset worldwide market -VoDSL trials with Voicestream and Coppercom now -Will trial VDSL on the same platform as VoDSL -BBRAS is ALA's Redback competing product. -BBRAS has 15% of worldwide market(same as Cisco's) -Hanaro, Singapore, Korea and France Telecom are customers LMDS -Hope to dominate LMDS similar to DSL domination -Provide 8Mbs in the 5km range -Provide up to 4,000 subs/base station -40 trials are now underway, 4 continents(sans NN) -Has been selected by 50 SPs -Estimate will ramp up in 2000 H2 Optics -Will do $7 billion in 2000 -Have 80 lambda product -DWDM in Q1 was more than all of 1999 -Tunable laser and amplifiers will do EUR 400mil in 2000 -Bragged about their 'Convergence' win over CSCO and NT. -Convergence is an all IP network for Latin American rollout in four countries Mobile Wireless Internet -Joint venture with Fujitsu, 66% is ALA owned -Working on GSM, 2.5G(GPRS, EDGE), 3G(UMTS/IMT 2000) -2,400 headcount for JV -ALA's strength's; 8-10% GSM market, Evolium, strong lead in GPRS & EDGE, IP knowledge -Evolium transition: GSM->GPRS->EDGE->UMTS(ATM)->UMTS(IP) -Fujitsu's strength; DoCoMo**, strong in UMTS, UMTS chipsets, Japanese 3G is good to go today -JV will mean a 9 month lead on competition in 3G market -JV will offer end to end products