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

To: Frank A. Coluccio who wrote (7398)	6/24/2000 5:26:00 PM
From: lml	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 12823

Perhaps the seed of the necessary backbone for VDSL has already been sewn. Yes, that's my hypothesis. But you, like Mike, raise the issue of economics, which I agree, and I think you will agree with me when I say that "this is nothing new." Economics, not technology, IMHO, is the way to study this. How bad do RBOCs want to get into video broadcasting? And what are the ancilliary benefits going forward, not backward, to be received by making the necessary investment (biting the bullet) today rather than a later point in time when traditional economics would warrant? Today's broadband vision of the future, IMHO, warrant a new analysis by the telcos, where they can no longer "hold the bandwidth lunch" until the market is willing to pay on their terms. Because if they don't share the lunch, someone else (MSOs, overbuilders, MMDS providers a la MikeM, DBS providers) will. What are the opportunity costs to the telcos over the longer run by withholding VDSL levels of bandwidth from its customers? These are the considerations they are being weighed today, and think they have been weighed, and the decision is to "share the lunch," but to share it one bite at a time and see how things go. No sense in "giving the farm away" in one big swoop, when we can sell it off piece meal & hopefully realize greater value in the long run. In short, I think deployment of greater bandwidth will surely be demand-pull rather than supply-push. I think we, the consumer, are going have to tug on "the lunch" continually if we are going to get fed. As its been said there's no such thing as a "free lunch," and I think it will apply to bandwidth as well.