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

To: lml who wrote (526)	7/29/2000 8:41:23 PM
From: ahhaha	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 46821

I, too, was unfamiliar with the fact that ALA is marketing Litespan under the DSC name. ahhaha's reference to it is the first I've come across. Inside the 6x6x8 metal box there is a unit about the size of a PC that sits in a slot in a rack. The unit is black and says "DSC Communications" on the right side. That's all I know. On further investigation I have been able to identify more of these metal boxes far closer together than first assumed. Rather than 5 miles apart they are more like 1 mile apart so they must serve 1/5 the number of users, say 1,000 rather than 5,000. The 5,000 figure came from someone who was not sure of number of users supported, but given all the empty slots, the metal box had a lot of expansion potential. From Alcatel's discussion of their Litespan 1540 SD it seems this metal box contains one. What is interesting about this SDH-DLC is that it can support or interface all the kinds of narrow and broadband services, DSL, POTS, FO Internet, ISDN, VOD, a versatile device that shortens the haul. In this case Att is using it exclusively for FOC. There are three feeds going into the box. One is the loop FOC, the second is CATV, and the third is power. There is no copper data line. This box discussion is not of much interest by itself, but it does show that Att is very close to launching retail BB:telephony and it shows their commitment to make BB:Internet robust in the LM. You won't find the same degree of material concerted effort being made by the local BOC, PacBell, which controls communications here. Att is coming in from the outside completely alone and taking this aggressive step. One has to be impressed with Att for doing what they said they would this quickly. These metal boxes by mere appearance look like Att means business. The boxes with their imposing look symbolize the big time and they promise Att is going to grab the market in these various communications services.

To: lml who wrote (526)	7/29/2000 11:07:41 PM
From: Frank A. Coluccio	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 46821

lml, some of my comments in my last post were partly tongue in cheek. "... was more than the "remote fix" you subsequently describe." I think that in my post I was discussing preparing against both power outages, _AND_ fiber failures (therefore, my allusion to the FTTH scenario, because it typically is thought of as having no central office lifeline battery). Then, in the latter case (fiber failures in situations where there were no metallic conductors going back to the CO), even an on-site generation plant doesn't help, unless it's used to power wireless units. Wireless, hopefully, would still function properly, if the cell sites in the serving area were not also dependent on the same fiber ring that failed, again, assuming that it was the optical component that was taken out in the first place. Quite a bit of soul searching took place last year by large enterprises and governments in the search to devise the most likely fail-safe solution to meet just about any Y2K failure contingency. What to use as the voice platform of last resort? Some firms went as far as building new satellite links, but soon they found themselves being asked who was it that they would speak to in the event of a massive catastrophic failure? The universe of reachable off points using satellite links is rather limited, except for those other locations in the enterprise that happen to be on net. Of course, links "could" be established to switched services in diverse remote locales. What a fiasco that whole "what if" exercise was, for a while. Glad it's over. Nextel made out rather well, tho, racking up big sales to meet Y2K contingencies, and many of those units are still in use today. Bring on Y3K, they must be saying. FAC