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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 (8391)	9/7/2000 9:07:57 PM
From: Raymond Duray	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 12823

Last Mile: 21st century harsh reality By Loring Wirbel, EETimes eetimes.com Thread, here's an editorial view from someone who knows a thing or two about the Last Mile..... 21st century harsh reality By Loring Wirbel EE Times (08/28/00, 9:53 a.m. EST) All the optogeeks will be in Denver this week for the National Fiber Optics Engineers Conference, where they will wax poetic about how the metro area is going optical and the masses can get megabit services today. They can? I hate to burst the true believers' bubble, but last-mile technologies represent the same bottleneck they have for five years. It's not that there's anything inherently wrong with digital subscriber lines (DSLs), cable TV hybrid backbones, wireless broadband or passive optical networks. Broadband service is easy to provision for the few. But when it comes to overcoming that digital divide for a mass audience, the costs involved in responding to short-term economic pressure are a stronger pull than the desire to leave the circuit-switched voice world behind. Conference attendees should study an excellent piece on the economics of DSL-oriented competitive local exchange carriers (CLECs), which the Denver Post carried Aug. 14. The Post looked at Verizon's investment to essentially take over pioneer CLEC NorthPoint Communications, and concluded that being a data CLEC is no fun any more. Folks at Rhythms NetConnections and DSL.net have cherry-picked all the business customers they can, and find their stock prices dropping even as their ability to penetrate further into copper loops is limited. The result? DSL CLECs either get swallowed by incumbent phone companies, or transition into application service providers or some other life form-or simply wither away. It's no better in cable. My tiny cable carrier used High-Speed Access Inc. to manage cable modem services, and I've had a great one-way experience for MP3 downloads and live Web conferences. But HSA depended on the home cable company's schedule to install fiber amps to offer a two-way, always-on cable modem. I never believed the 1999 plans for fiber/coaxial upgrades in the first place, but then my little cable company got swallowed by Adelphia, as did virtually every cable operator in the Colorado Springs region. Adelphia has some great nationwide plans for broadband upgrades, but how soon will they get to Colorado? Even the customers of the cable giants will face this money-driven problem, if the rumors about John Malone wanting to buy and split up AT&T are true. This is the scenario we will face again and again in copper, coaxial, fiber and wireless. On paper, the majority of the public should be able to get broadband access at reasonable rates. But where the technology is willing, the investment dollars are weak, and we may suffer from the last-mile blues for the foreseeable future. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I hadn't heard that Malone rumor yet. That'd be a humdinger of M&A story. :)) I'll see if I can track down that Denver Post article. Best, Ray