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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 (9905)	12/23/2000 7:38:29 AM
From: MikeM54321	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 12823

Thread- And if you want to kill the nascent iTV market, there is no better way than for the government to come in and force their ideas onto the MSOs. Here we go again. Armstong spends $100 billion buying up cable plants only to be told again and again what he can and cannot do by the government. It's no wonder telecommunications upgrades are slowing. This time we have at least a hundred companies vying for the same market(i-TV) that I'm sure they will be crying to the FCC for regulation or de-regulation(whatever suits their interest at the time). Just think, they are not even crying yet, and already the government is getting involved. I love the way the government always starts out with good intentions and their inherently nice sounding buzzwords like, 'safeguards.' But it generally ends in a mess. If they pursue telling the cable plant owners(twisted pair or DBS for that matter) how to run their plants, it does not bode well for i-TV rollouts but does bode well for lawyers. -MikeM(From Florida) ______________________ *FCC Pondering Cable-ITV Safeguards* Washington -- Catching the cable industry off-guard, the Federal Communications Commission is considering adopting rules that would restrict cable operators from interfering with interactive content and electronic-commerce triggers carried by programmers and Internet-service providers, according to agency and industry sources. Interactive-TV issues have been hotly debated at the FCC in the context of America Online Inc.'s merger with Time Warner Inc., which the agency is expected to approve in a matter of days. In particular, The Walt Disney Co. has pressed the commission to block AOL-Time Warner from disabling competing interactive-TV triggers. Last week, the Federal Trade Commission, in approving the merger, included conditions designed to protect the interactive-TV services of competitors that access consumers over Time Warner Cable systems. National Cable Television Association spokesman David Beckwith said the FCC's move came as something of a surprise, especially because the interactive-TV market is just beginning to develop. "The FCC has got to be careful to address actual public-policy concerns, rather than responding to a particular company's getting a leg up on the competition," Beckwith said. multichannel.com

To: MikeM54321 who wrote (9905)	12/23/2000 4:39:08 PM
From: FR1	Respond to of 12823

Mike - I get the feeling that Nolle is making the mistake of taking today's environment and projecting it into the future. Naturally he sees evil. What fuels the capital expenditures of the industry is either capital or earnings. IMHO he had it right above but went on to say: Nobody in the new-generation carrier space is going to get capital. I think businesses adjust themselves to the economic world they live in. A year+ ago interest rates were not a threat. People like ATT took on great debt and enormous projects even though returns were a long way away because they felt they could handle the debt with the liquidity that was available. Lots of new IPOs were also coming to market and making available new ideas to the industry. Then, unfortunately, the professors at the FED decided it as a good time to slow business to a crawl by draining the liquidity Nolle talks about out of the economy. It was a terrible misguided academic exercise since no meaningful inflation was ever there. It only happened because congress refuses to oversee FED decisions. The FED now admits the mistake and will lower rates. This will bring back the IPOs and capital funding. It won't take that long. 1/2 point down is a clear signal that the FED has decided to stop choking the market. The guys like ICGE and CMGI are still there - waiting and ready to go. Note also that some major industry problems will be removed one way or the other in the immediate future: AOL/TWX agreement will be resolved. ATT the same. JDSU/SDLI the same. Probably all this in January/Feburary. This gives clarity to fund managers. Lower US interest rates means stronger euro which helps. Oil is down $10/barrel. The only bad news is that businesses have been damaged by the FED exercise. However, IMHO, recovery will come quickly because there is a strong driving demand. If this was the 1970's we would go into recession for years.