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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 (9910)	12/23/2000 2:29:36 PM
From: Kenneth E. Phillipps	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 12823

"Keep 3G Wireless on Your Radar, Not in Crosshairs zdnet.com Sierra Wireless and Xircom announce plans to build wireless modems. 3G is 2 to 4 years away from becoming a real part of your life. (Sooner in Europe.) (In the meanwhile, Nortel is building the core infrastructure.) New handsets will be required Advertised speed is 384 Kbps - Real throughput will appear to be about half this. Richochet at $75 per month has 128 Kbps. Look for laptop PCs with an upgradeable card at best speed available.

To: Raymond Duray who wrote (9910)	12/23/2000 6:51:35 PM
From: EJhonsa	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 12823

As far as i-TV is concerned, I couldn't care less if it lives or dies. What is the point of it anyway? If you want to think and interact you use the Internet. Like we are doing here. If you want to vegetate and turn your mind off, you turn on the TV. Joe Six Pack couldn't give a hoot about interacting with his TV. Not until on-line betting on the sports events he's watching is made available. So, until I see this, or another killer app for i-TV, I can't imagine it having any real success. One potential killer app I can think of right now is the deployment of t-commerce service via integration into standard TV advertisments. As we all know, Joe Six Pack does tend to be very lazy, and quite often very impulsive as well. Meanwhile, since the signal could be embedded into a digital television stream, and thus managed by the MSO, credit card information might not even be necessary, as a given buyer could be charged for the transaction via his/her cable bill. Another i-TV application that could be popular is the on-demand streaming of video clips related to a given program. For example, while watching a football game, a person could pull up a highlight reel of one of the players in the game, or a replay of a touchdown that took place an hour earlier. The "wow" factor of such an application could definitely be significant. Just look at how far WebTV has come in the last 5 years. Exactly nowhere, from a revenue perspective. Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't WebTV have a few million subscribers? This seems fairly impressive, given that it requires subscribers to purchase proprietary equipment related to the service out of their own pocket, and that it currently can only be done over standard phone lines. As next-generation set-top boxes containing in-built cable modems arrive on the scene (i.e. GI's DCT-5000), these two drawbacks will go away. This development, in turn, could have a direct impact on whether interactive TV will take off: MSOs will have a huge incentive to deploy boxes such as the DCT-5000 due to their potential to drive additional revenues from internet access and video-on-demand services. However, it's worth noting that these devices will also be needed to support high-quality interactive TV. Thus, if a large number of such advanced set-top boxes get deployed, TV networks and advertisers will be given the incentive that they need to push i-TV services. Eric