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

To: Raymond Duray who wrote (7018)	5/19/2000 5:13:00 PM
From: lml	Respond to of 12823

LOL, Ray. As a matter fact, I'll be looking to make the telco-MSO jump in about 6 months time as my present "gig," which is end game, should allow me to move on in about that time, but PR is not my bag, though its my wife's. As a matter of fact I am not to high on PacBell right now, not the carrier side of the biz, but on their ISP biz. They are horrific, and I am now in the process of contracting with an ISP that resells Northpoint provisioned copper as my PacBell ISDN line while good, my connection to the Internet is abysmal. My bandwidth has decreased by as much as 30% since initially provisioned with ISDN access in August 1998. I've been waiting for Pronto DSL for over a year, (my area was initially designated as a test area), and as of present day, they have only recently obtained a letter of intent to acquire the ROW where the RT will be installed that will serve my neighborhood. My estimate is no Pronto DSL for at least 7-8 months, and likely 10-11 months, notwithstanding the backlog PBI is experiencing signing up DSL customers every day. PBI now uses PPPoE for their DSL subscribers, which means that each DSL (& dial-up customer) first goes through an authentication server before getting routed to the Internet. So as I dial-up customer, I now have an additional hop that I really don't need. I'm not worrying about sharing DSLAMs in the hood. What any customer should worry about is sharing router access to the POP server. My experience with PBI is awful. Even connecting to my mail server takes up to a minute or more. PR? PacBell wouldn't want me. You see fairly up to speed with Pronto. Most who are aware of Pronto are only familiar with the DSL aspect. They are not aware of the intent to install SVCs and employ IADs that will deliver VoDSL to the hood and permit local networking that can bypass Level 5 switches in the CO altogether. Yes, I as see it SVCs will permit subscribers to maintain more than one DSL connection on the same provisioned copper but at the different times. One can switch from a PBI connection to a Earthlink connection, or to a CLEC ISP connection, as well as a corporate LAN. I envision the latter to be the gateway over which video-on-demand will ultimately be delivered over copper pair into the home. A Pronto customer could punch in a couple numbers & switch from his DSL connected to the Internet to a DSL connected to a BlockBuster LAN, or a Sony Video Library LAN and download a 2 hour feature film w/o clogging up the Internet gateway for everybody else. I think its gonna take VDSL chip technology to get the bandwidth up to the 25-35 Mbps range, but this is where I see Pronto headed. As far as pricing, your seeing the effects brought on by competition already. I see SBC's strategy to not preclude, but to forestall, the ability of CLECs from provisioning Pronto-installed copper to the neighborhood cross-connect. They are open to competition, but want to be the first in the "theatre" and reserve all the best seats, and then allow the CLEC to compete for those seats with price, and hopefully drive them out of business, consolidation, or drive their stock price down far enough to make acquisitions the play of the day. IMHO, going forward carriers will be in the business primarily of providing ACCESS to a customer base that content providers and companies engaged in e-commerce will be willing to pay a fee. Ultimately, I don't think the consumer will pay much, if anything, for access to the world's networks, particularly if they represent revenues to the carriers at the other end of the pipe. Study the broadcast business model & you will see what I am getting at. Gotta roll. Have a good weekend.