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Technology Stocks : LAST MILE TECHNOLOGIES - Let's Discuss Them Here -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: MikeM54321 who wrote (8671)	10/1/2000 12:18:05 PM
From: justone	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 12823

Mike: As I understand it HDSL2's big advantage over HDL is is needs only one wire pair, instead of two, and it can go 12 Kft in distance. This is suitable for most business and small offices, which tend to be close to COs, and it is really good for PBX or leased lines to businesses; you can double your access rate by going from HDSL to HDLS2 without laying any fiber or copper, or buying new internal equipment. I think technical people tend to overestimate the replacement rate of transmission media. The real history of telecommunications can be categorized, in one view, as the history of making more out of the same. Thus some people are surprised to see 'legacy' systems such as SONET and ATM (developed in the 80's) still around and not yet replaced by IP (developed in the 60's). People who make claims often don't have much real life experience, particularly in management of networks You might say, they haven't a legacy to stand on. Sorry for the pun. What will kill this business is: 1) either small business all decide they need more than two t1's access, 2) fiber comes down so low it is cheaper to run it to a building than to replace t1 equipment with HDLS I haven't checked the marketing forecasts, but I think 1) is unlikely. If I need a lot of bandwidth, I would go right to fiber, but if I'm building a small company, I'll stick to sub-t1 access, particularly if it resues copper. Now 2) may happen. There may be cases where a large building may distribute lines internally and need a fiber or something to handle the accumulated access of many small companies (like a mall?) Also, I've personally heard of a case where a candy company, with very limited voice and very very limited data needs was offered a fiber by a CLEC. It turned out that pulling the fiber was the responsibility of the local ILEC, and they had to subsidize it for some reason I still don't understand. Thus 2) seems to be the critical issue. I've seen posts before giving cost information on fiber, but only vs. running NEW copper: it may be at parity today- some claim it is cheaper to run fiber. But I suspect that most small businesses don't need more than a single T1 (one pair HDSL2), and if they do grow, they don't need more than 2 T1s (two pairs of HDSL). At that point the question is will their growth be satisfied by two pairs or do you force a move to fiber, or is three pairs still a better option. I've said it before and I'll say it again- the only application I see needing high bandwidth is point to point video- that might require a tripling of 'voice' capacity. At that point fiber may be needed. I say five years as a guess.