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Technology Stocks : METRICOM - Wireless Data Communications -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: who cares? who wrote (2942)	12/14/2000 8:14:24 PM
From: John Curtis	Respond to of 3376

C.M.: It seems weird to me though to treat MCOM like it's a rock solid service right at the rollout in a city.. You'll get no argument from me in this area. Sometimes passions run high with the potential a product represents, and as a consequence logic and caution get thrown right out the window. The fact is MCOM is still mostly story. But it's one that's building. I also agree that the target is business with a sales or repair fleet in a large city, and I don't see it going much beyond that. If it was more profitable to go into a smaller market, they would have, but they're not wasting their precious cash on it.... I understand what you're saying, but I'm not sure I agree. MCOM's wireless internet strategy seems remarkably akin to the strategies employed by others at their initial phases. Those others being cellular phone service and cable. That is; target the dense metropolitan "core" (or tier 1) regions first, with particular focus on the business communities therein, and once those are secure and generating revenues then roll out through lower tier markets in follow-up fashion. It should be noted, though, that cable targeted from inception the retail community and not the business one. A strategy I'm sure they regret at this juncture, although given such as VPN's (Virtual Private Networks) are now in ascension due to the flexibilities of the Internet.....well...they still stand to garner a piece of the business pie, no? But this leads me to an important point. The question becomes, as with cellular, will the larger community see value in being able to access the internet in a wireless fashion? Are the potential wireless applications robust enough to garner market share, indeed, take it away from cellular? THAT'S the $64 question, eh? It comes to this. MCOM is here NOW, albeit at roll-out phase, with their offering. Their competion has several years before any of their offerings, specifically 3G, have any more substance than the "vaporware." (And pssst....have you been tracking what the bandwidth licensing costs in this regard are turning out to be? Yeeesh! And this isn't to mention the fact that it ain't all it's cracked up to be...as is becoming publicly apparent). But still, as I said, at this point they're mostly a building story. An intriguing entrepreneurial gamble. One I plan on following to see how it turns out. Regards! John~