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Technology Stocks : The *NEW* Frank Coluccio Technology Forum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Frank A. Coluccio who wrote (329)	7/6/2000 2:30:34 AM
From: Raymond Duray	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 46821

The crucial role for these unrepeatered experiments is the submarine market. I'm keep a keen eye out to see who's making headway in this segment. Corning and Tyco have just inked a deal with Global Light (GBT) for a Caribbean system that might bear some watching. GBT is majority owner of Bestel which should benefit from the Fox victory in Mexico. R.

To: Frank A. Coluccio who wrote (329)	7/6/2000 5:21:18 PM
From: Frank A. Coluccio	Respond to of 46821

The Shape of Things to Come - IP's impact on the mobile world internettelephony.com JOHN WILLIAMSON, SENIOR TECHNOLOGY EDITOR Telephony Magazine, July 1, 2000 Up till fairly recently, discussions about voice over Internet protocol (IP), or IP telephony, were mostly conducted in the context of the following: the ambitions of Internet service providers (ISPs) eager to move into the mainstream telecoms business; the efforts of start-up wireline telecom operators to capture some of the business of the supposedly bloated telco incumbents; and the efforts by the last group of businesses to repulse the attacks of the first two groups, by fair means or foul. Here I have to confess to not being too sure of the exact distinction between VOIP and IP telephony -- but if it is subtle this is only to be expected. At the 1999 GSM World Congress in Cannes, France, members of the mobile community, and notably Nortel Networks, signalled their intention to get in on the IP telephony act. Ever since then, there has been a lot of talk, but not a great deal of action, from mobile manufacturers apparently bent on grasping the mobile implications of the IP telephony nettle. During a recent series of presentations held in Helsinki, there was some more mobile IP telephony talk -- as you might expect from Nokia. This time there was also a stated corporate commitment to be the first vendor to implement an all-IP core mobile network (voice and non-voice) by 2002. To be accurate, in the Nokia hand-outs, IP telephony was not the real star; much more was made of the potential of the company's all-IP core to facilitate 3G "rich" calls and mobile Internet services, offering reduced costs and improvements in service creation over existing circuit-switched solutions. "Today voice is probably bringing in 95 percent of mobile operators' revenues," according to Lauri Melamies, senior vice president of Network Systems at Nokia Networks. "We believe that by 2005 mobile Internet services will account for roughly 60 percent of the total revenues." Nevertheless, Rene Svendsen-Tune, senior vice president for marketing and sales at the same Nokia business unit, calculates that by the year 2004 there will be as many IP telephony users as there are circuit-switched voice users. The Nokia all-IP core network solution will be based on IPv6. This offers, inter alia, hundreds of millions of new addresses, enhanced quality of service (QOS) and security in IP networks, and more flexibility in billing. Nokia's view is that, ultimately, mobile billed minutes won't count, but something else -- there are a number of possibilities -- will. Other Nokia wireless insights offered in Helsinki: the pixel count on mobile phone screens will increase by a factor of four; there will be Internet services that will not become mobile services, and vice versa; 100 Mb/s somewhere is less significant than 100 Kb/s everywhere; the significance of general packet radio service (GPRS) is not its bit rate but its "always on" nature; "always on" GPRS has major implications for cell phone batteries; and the total spend on 3G networks will amount to $200 billion in 3 to 5 years. Overheard in Helsinki: "Is that a browser in your trouser, or are you just pleased to 2G me?" WAP Rapped Wireless application protocol (WAP) is also supposed to be part of the shape of mobile things to come. But already there have been problems with getting handsets to market and reports of interoperability problems. Now a new report from the Ovum consultancy in London warns that the WAP window of opportunity is fast closing and there is a significant danger of end-user disappointment and backlash against the technology. Michele MacKenzie, Ovum analyst and lead author of "WAP Market Strategies," says: "WAP was never meant as the be-all and end-all of mobile Internet -- as and when mobile network improvements allow, more sophisticated technologies will take center stage." The Ovum report maintains that the development of WAP was never going to be easy given the widely differing interests of the players involved -- what Ovum calls "collision of the mobile world with the Internet world." This has resulted in slow progress and disappointing early releases of the technology. In fact, suggests Ovum, WAP may end up being squeezed as next-generation technologies based on extensible markup language (XML) catch up during the next three years. Although WAP has massive industry backing, delays in decision-making are leading some players to hedge bets. Ericsson, for example, is backing a dual-mode microbrowser. Even worse, says Ovum, development of WAP handsets has been out of step with coming 2G+ mobile network upgrades. This means that the early WAP user will need to buy yet another handset for faster speeds. "That will cause customer alienation, and marketing headaches for handset vendors," predicts MacKenzie. The shape of things to come is clearly a tough old business.

To: Frank A. Coluccio who wrote (329)	7/7/2000 5:04:20 PM
From: Frank A. Coluccio	Respond to of 46821

Thread, In my ill-advised quip that is found in the uplinked message I stated, perhaps prematurely and without having done proper research, *and maybe even entirely incorrectly, hence the reason for my qualifying it with "I'm pretty sure": "I'm pretty sure that these un-regenerated routes don't include optical add-drop muxes (OADMs)."* An email that I received has caused me to revisit this statement. Of course Corvis employs OADM. That was not my point. My point was more of an errant quip than it was meant to be technically accurate. In any event, I stand corrected. The following is copied from the Corvis web site, which, on the surface at least, reverses what I stated: "The ONG [optical network gateway] also currently provides up to 400 Gb/s capacity on one fiber that can be transmitted up to 3,200 kilometers without electronic regeneration. The Corvis ONG can be integrated with our Optical Add/Drop Multiplexer and Optical Router to provide flexible traffic management, high network efficiency and fast restoration. The only remaining question is this: Can an integrated ONG-ADM configuration yield an un-regenerated 3,200 km path through "all-optical" techniques? I'm indebted to the person who brought this to my attention. They had a valid point, as evidenced by the above quote. They also stated that I was showing my ignorance on these matters. Perhaps I was. It could certainly be argued that my assumptions were made along narrowly and over-simplified lines. As always, I'm open to further comments and corrections. FAC