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Technology Stocks : Covad Communications - COVD -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: 10K a day who wrote (2734)	12/6/2000 9:38:57 AM
From: Captain James T. Kirk	Respond to of 10485

The mainstream media yesterday reported that the worst is over for the markets. I a remain skeptical on their opinion. RTHM being sold off like they are going under. Do you think someone knows something? Also, SBC reported they will install fewer lines than expected this Q. Now the question is, is this "fewer lines" a problem across the sector OR have they run into some competition from our friend COVD?

To: 10K a day who wrote (2734)	12/6/2000 4:51:08 PM
From: Captain James T. Kirk	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10485

THURSDAY, 07 DECEMBER 2000 Czech Republic more attractive investment than NZ - Covad 06 DECEMBER 2000 Silicon Valley start-up Covad says New Zealand is less attractive for telecommunications investment than the Czech Republic because of its lack of telecommunications regulation. International director Jim Earl said what made the Czech Republic more attractive was the compulsory unbundling of its local loop that it must carry out in order to become a member of the European Union. Only regulation would unlock the monopoly on the local loop and introduce competition on that "last mile" of copper wire between an exchange and the consumer that rivals want access to attach their own technologies and services. Clear Communications has brought Mr Earl to New Zealand. It is an ardent advocate of unbundling but the telecommunications inquiry has not recommended it to the Government but said it preferred to see how it played out in other countries. The inquiry has recommended Telecom be required to wholesale its local loop at regulated prices, a first stage toward unbundling. Mr Earl said Covad would not have been formed four years ago to sell and install digital subscriber line technology services if the United States had not passed the Telecommunications Act 1996, forcing incumbent telephone companies to give non-discriminatory access to their local loop. Covad, listed on the Nasdaq, has 200,000 dsl lines. Its customers were corporates using dsl to communicate with workers in the field and the other large grouping was Internet service providers. The technology involving dsl "supercharges" the standard copper wires to much greater capacity. The adsl type of dsl allows the copper wires to be used to send data at high speed in one direction but only lower speed in the other. Mr Earl said adsl was not used widely in the United States, even though telephone companies had had access to the technology for 15 years, till new competitors like Covad began offering it once the companies had access to the local loop of incumbents mandated under the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Covad was supplying another version of the technology, sdsl for symmetrical digital subscriber line services, which allows high- speed data transmission both upstream and downstream - at a quarter the cost of incumbents' prices for leased data lines. No incumbent in Europe or the Asia Pacific was offering sdsl because it competed with their existing high-speed data transmission services. Mr Earl said even when the law clearly mandated unbundling, incumbent telecommunications companies would deny and delay to thwart opening up the local loop to rivals. Covad had a 70 percent-owned affiliate in Spain, another in India and a newly acquired one in Japan. It was also talking to potential partners in Europe. It had taken part in making submissions to the Singapore Government when it was considering deregulation. Singapore had thrown open its telecommunications market because it was determined to compete with Hong Kong as an Asian telecommunications hub, in contrast to New Zealand, which was taking more tentative steps toward that, Mr Earl said.