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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 (8095)	8/21/2000 12:37:12 AM
From: axial	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 12823

Hi, Ray - Good read. The Japanese aversion to DSL should be noted by cable and DSL providers here; the time when they are going to have their lunch eaten by wireless is fast approaching. Wireless may not take market share, but it sure will cap it. Seeing the ease of use enabled by i-Mode, and the (relatively) good translation of web pages, you've gotta wonder why eveyyone just doesn't drop WAP, and head for i-Mode, or as you suggest, cHTML. WAP looks to me like a kludge dreamed up to accomodate bandwidth limitations. Microsoft has it about right when they compare WAP to DOS, see article below. I wonder if that means that their devices, in the handheld area, will gain market share? In portable devices, there is a view that, as wireless infrastructure buildout proceeds, and bandwidth increases, more people will opt for the richer functionality offered by Microsoft handhelds (as opposed to handsets). What a fascinating field; you need a scorecard to keep track of all the players, never mind the games! Microsoft compares Wap with Dos Microsoft won't support Wap in its handheld device software because it says the mobile internet protocol's functionality is limited and has compared it with the text-based Dos operating system. Speaking at the software giant's TechEd Europe conference this week, Dilip Mistry, Microsoft's mobility solution centre marketing manager, said Wap functionality would not be delivered natively in the company's Pocket Internet Explorer software. Users would instead have to use third-party Wap browsers, he said. "Wap can be compared with the functionality that was offered by DOS [on the PC]. It is not a rich internet experience for end users," said Mistry. At the Cebit trade fair in March, Microsoft executives said the company had been considering including Wap support in Pocket Internet Explorer, but these plans have been scrapped. Mistry said that users are not really asking for the ability to see Wap pages on handheld devices, and he described the protocol as limited. The lukewarm response to Wap is significant because Microsoft chairs a group involved in creating a security standard for the protocol. Separately, Microsoft plans to provide a Soap (Simple Object Access Protocol) client for the Pocket PC next year. Soap is a cross-platform XML technology that is central to much of the company's future development work, particularly around its .Net platform. Researcher Ovum predicts that the market's focus on Wap as a technology will be eroded through the emergence of new mark-up languages under the XML standard, and Wap will become indistinguishable in its own right by 2003 to 2005. vnunet.com

To: Raymond Duray who wrote (8095)	8/21/2000 6:28:38 AM
From: elmatador	Respond to of 12823

DSL in Japan is non-existent because the operator wanted government money to build FTTH. Since it had already paid the operator to build its long haul fiber network, they wanted the Last Mile as well.

To: Raymond Duray who wrote (8095)	8/21/2000 9:51:49 AM
From: MikeM54321	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 12823

Re: Japan and Internet Stats Thread- Ray thanks for the url. Gee no wonder when I listen to equipment vendors CC's they always say, "Asia, ex-Japan, reports rapid growth of xx%!" I had no idea Japan was so far behind in broadband access. I do know most companies report Asia as, "excluding Japan." What a discombobulated government. They apparently hinder standards that make sense, while promoting those that don't. Take their high definition-TV program from years and years ago. And take ISDN as a recent example. IMVHO, ironically Japan takes the very early initiative to promote a technology before it becomes proven. And the government seems to have such a powerful influence as to eliminate what may be better competing technologies. -MikeM(From Florida) ________________________ Moreover, the Japanese telephone industry invested heavily in an early version of a digital technology known as ISDN -- a type of phone service much slower than DSL and only slightly faster than modem data sent over a standard, analog phone line that many people in the United States still use for Internet access. Although NTT has recently made overtures to the American DSL companies, industry executives said that the telecom giant was in no rush to invest in DSL -- in part because it is still anxious to retrieve its investment in ISDN. For all the landline forces working against him, though, the biggest challenge to Kobayashi's vision of wiring Japan has nothing to do with wires at all. Just the opposite, in fact. The Japanese are heading onto the Internet in droves -- by wireless means. Currently, according to InfoCom Research, there are between 20 million and 27 million Internet users in Japan, or approximately one of every five people in the nation. Of that number, nearly half -- some 10 million -- are connecting to the Internet wirelessly. Of these wireless customers, 7.5 million are using a service called i-mode, offered by NTT DoCoMo, NTT's wireless division. For nearly two of three i-mode users, this wireless link is their only method of access to the Internet. InfoCom forecasts that the percent of Japanese population connected wirelessly to the Internet will increase to more than 85 percent by 2003, compared with only about 60 percent connected by fixed-line networks.