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Technology Stocks : SDLI - JDSU transition -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tom Hughes who wrote (337)	2/21/2001 5:36:10 PM
From: pat mudge	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3294

Good article. "There are some things that money can't buy," explains Greg Floerke, senior vice president for engineering and construction at Williams. These specifically include the ability to instantly meet an unexpected surge in demand for fiber. "It takes a while to build these plants," he continues. Expansion requires lots of time and hundreds of millions, or even billions of dollars. The suppliers weren't about to start down that path until they knew the spike in demand was real and lasting, observes Natalie Veres, director of marketing communications at Alcatel North America's fiber optics division. "Now we know it's real." "The delta between the most likely forecast and the most optimistic forecast often can be as large as the output of an entire fiber factory. We're talking about tens of millions of kilometers of fiber at play," notes Curt Weinstein, director of metropolitan fiber at Corning. "It's virtually impossible to turn on new capacity in less than 18 months." Nevertheless, fiber deployment rose 30% last year to 90 million kilometers, following a 35% spurt in 1999, according to Corning. The vendor expects global growth to continue at the same rate until 2004 or later.