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Technology Stocks : The *NEW* Frank Coluccio Technology Forum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Frank A. Coluccio who wrote (1661)	1/6/2001 3:37:43 PM
From: MikeM54321	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 46821

Frank and ftth- Well that was painful. I had my response all typed up and edited and it got zapped away. So here goes again... Sorry about that. I did confuse ClearWorks and WINfirst. But nonetheless the basic question remains the same. What happens to the upstream end of the fiber in the FTTH plant that both ClearWorks and WINfirst are laying? It's a solid question because these new builders can't come in and economically replicate the incredible complexity of the telco central office or the cableco headend. And that is only part of the battle. The relationships required to move upstream of the headends and central office has to be mighty hard to replicate too. In other words, it's not so much that I don't believe the FTTH overbuilders would be unable to lay fiber. I do think it's very possible it can be laid to the doorsteps of homes. But it's seems economically impossible to fight the entrenched interests of the 100 year old telco and 50 year old cableco trillion dollar plants. What I'm driving at is this. If the fiber is going to be laid to the home, IMO the only feasible companies to be doing this will be today's telcos and cablecos. I'm of the opinion FTTH is going to be rolled very SLOWLY and/or INCREMENTALLY as either giant sees fit. No matter how the PRs of the FTTH builders paint a different picture. Very much like the telcos have crushed CLECs, so will cablecos crush any who aim to steal their revenues. In this case both cablecos and telcos don't want upstart FTTH overbuilders to succeed. Not that I particularly want it this way, but the reality of $100 billion(telco local loop) plus $38 billion(cable TV industry) in annual revenues buys a LOT of power that will make them to do anything to protect it. -MikeM(From Florida)