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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 (7624)	7/15/2000 10:34:58 AM
From: MikeM54321	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 12823

"Whereby, instead of moving fiber closer in successive steps -- an extremely labor and materials intense proposition -- the fiber is instead installed directly to the home, first." Frank- Great post! Thanks. Now the above, IMVHO, brings up the KEY problem. How can a full implementation of FTTH be paid for? As you may recall, I did a couple of posts upstream, from my engineering/construction company perspective, that said that running fiber is fully 50% of the cost of an entire broadband access project. In other words, if the telco simply elects to slap on the ADSL equipment today, then they save 50% of the project costs. And this can be paid for(obviously because it's being done) by the extra $39.95/month they are able to collect from whatever percentage of subs sign up out of the total homes passed. But what would justify, at the very minimum, of at least doubling the implementation costs of getting broadband to the home via FTTH? As you say, the revenue generating applications are not there yet. So I can't see the reasoning for doing this from a business standpoint. Of course, if it's new builds(as is the BellSouth trials), then that's a totally different story. But what about the 200,000,000 twisted copper pairs already in place in North America? I can't see any financial incentive for the telcos to by-pass this legacy infrastructure when the applications today are not there for them to make money off of it. I very much agree with all your, and ftth's points too, about the FUTURE value of FTTH, and I'm simply trying to get a handle on WHEN it will come about. IMVHO, those twisted copper pairs, won't be losing their value for a very long time but I'm looking forward to hearing why I may be wrong. Hopefully not getting off the subject too far, but from what I see, the TV model may be the only justification for FTTH. But that is a giant confusing mess at this point in time. I don't see how an incumbent telco with legacy copper infrastructure already in place, AND a new way to milk extra profits from it(ADSL), would take any risks in the TV world without first understanding where TV world is going. Like I posted upstream, it would be great if one did(from our perspective of it not being our money), so we could watch that disruptive technology in action, but I just can't believe any incumbent telco would take the risk involved at this point in time. If not the incumbent telcos, who else is left that would take such a risk? -MikeM(From Florida)