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To: A.L. Reagan who wrote (96195)	3/26/2001 8:28:51 PM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 152472

Telecom companies seek payback By Ben Charny Special to CNET News.com March 26, 2001, 4:15 p.m. PT Some of the European businesses that paid a total of $190 billion last summer to buy the spectrum needed to run third-generation phone services on the continent want their money back. It was disclosed Monday that nearly 2,000 European business leaders have quietly signed a petition demanding governments in Germany, the United Kingdom, France, Italy and other European countries return the cash, then sell the spectrum all over again in a cheaper, and fairer, way. Instead of an auction, which drove the prices up, the governments should decide using applications submitted by companies. In the applications, the companies would spell out their qualifications, according to Declan J. Ganley of GrowthPlus, a European business association and one of the sponsors of the petition. Nothing less than the economic health of an entire continent is at stake, Ganley said. Most of the spectrum winners are financing the auction fees by going to the capital markets. British Telecom, for example, is undergoing an initial public offering. Other spectrum auction winners have sought the cash on the bond markets. Third-generation, or 3G, wireless technologies are expected to enable high-speed, always-on Internet connections for a number of devices including mobile phones, handheld computers and laptops within the next few years. Estimates vary as to exactly when 3G systems will be readily available, but most analysts expect the new technology to be well received once it debuts. While 3G licenses may have skyrocketed in Europe, the available capital for such ventures has not. In fact, Ganley said, the $190 billion the companies need to find is a billion dollars less than the entire pool of equity available in 1999 for all European business. "That money is dead money. It's not creating jobs. It's not funding the growth of new business," Ganley said. "The Communists, in their worst days, couldn't have dreamt up a tax as (bad) as this. The way this highway robbery has taken place has crippled the industry." Some industry watchers say that while the European auctions were excessive, the telecom companies may be fighting a lost cause because governments rarely return money that they've already made plans to spend. Plus, the analysts say, the petition could also easily be misinterpreted as whining about why companies had to pay so much money for licenses in Europe, while 3G licenses elsewhere are already dropping in price. The petition is just the latest sign of unrest over last summer's auctions. Last Monday, members of the European Union (EU) commission demanded a review of how the auctions were held. Some EU leaders are also asking that instead of paying in a lump sum, the spectrum winners be allowed to pay the money using installment plans, like a bank does for loan recipients. And in a rare admission, the head of British Telecom, Peter Bonfield, said his company spent about $15 billion too much for their licenses. While the U.S. government made about $17 billion when it auctioned off 3G licenses recently, there are signs of a slowdown. An upcoming French auction of four licenses has only drawn two bidders. Only three operators have said they'd bid for four 3G licenses in Belgium. Also on Monday, Australian leaders said companies including a Qualcomm subsidiary called 3G Investments won the rights to spectrum in an auction that garnered only half of the proceeds expected. 3G Investments said its bid of $79 million won the right to administer next-generation service for a potential customer base of 12.3 million people in some of Australia's larger cities. Other winners announced by the Australian government include Telstra, Cable & Wireless, Hutchinson Telecommunications and Vodaphy Group yahoofin.cnet.com Ö¿Ö

To: A.L. Reagan who wrote (96195)	3/26/2001 8:36:15 PM
From: The Reaper	Respond to of 152472

Just wanted to make sure that everyone sees this from the ML guy. <What happened was this: Earlier this month, AT&T Wireless (AWE:NYSE - news) started to advertise this new full service -- 3G wireless service, access to the Internet, streaming video, audio, the whole bit. They pointed out that what this was is this NTT DoCoMo I-Mode service, that it used this wide-band CDMA [code division multiple access] chipsets from Qualcomm (QCOM:Nasdaq - news). Then I saw the announcement that Verizon (VZ:NYSE - news) was giving Lucent (LU:NYSE - news) a $5 billion contract to build out the infrastructure for this service.> And this is his reason for buying QCOM? Let's just throw some friggin' darts at technology names and we'll buy whatever they land on and make up some reason to buy 'em. Where do I get a job like that? kirby

To: A.L. Reagan who wrote (96195)	3/26/2001 8:44:16 PM
From: quartersawyer	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 152472

ML Fundamental Growth Fund manager's statement: Printed out here for posterity, as a model of... whatever: "What happened was this: Earlier this month, AT&T Wireless (AWE:NYSE - news) started to advertise this new full service -- 3G wireless service, access to the Internet, streaming video, audio, the whole bit. They pointed out that what this was is this NTT DoCoMo I-Mode service, that it used this wide-band CDMA [code division multiple access] chipsets from Qualcomm (QCOM:Nasdaq - news). Then I saw the announcement that Verizon (VZ:NYSE - news) was giving Lucent (LU:NYSE - news) a $5 billion contract to build out the infrastructure for this service. When we started to build up our exposure to communications-equipment business in late-December 1996, it was on the same basis. Contracts, after like an 18-24 month period, in December of 1996 were being led by the wireless companies to build out the PCS digital-wireless spectrum. [Last week,] we made the first meaningful uptick in our exposure in technology in some time. We bought an investment position in Lucent, and we bought an investment position in Qualcomm. I mean, $5 billion is a huge contract, and it's more likely to be front-end loaded than back-end loaded because AT&T Wireless is offering this service. I'm sure they're using Lucent and Qualcomm components in this thing." Note: Sales charge= 5.25%. 5 yr. annualized beat 88% of peers.

To: A.L. Reagan who wrote (96195)	3/26/2001 9:18:04 PM
From: saukriver	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 152472

Don, that ML guy is scary in his ignorance. Q making chips for i-Mode? The LU/Verizon contract is for I-Mode? And people invest their hard-earned savings in this guy's fund? Q's curse. Too many FLAs (four-letter acronyms) for people to keep straight.

To: A.L. Reagan who wrote (96195)	3/27/2001 1:23:51 AM
From: Jon Koplik	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 152472

(Seriously) off topic -- grassy knoll / JFK update. March 26, 2001 Article Supports Grassy Knoll Shots By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Filed at 7:09 p.m. ET LONDON (AP) -- Sounds heard on police recordings from the killing of President Kennedy are consistent with a shot being fired from Dallas' famed grassy knoll, according to a new scientific article. Recordings of police radio traffic at the time of the 1963 assassination include loud noises which some investigators believe were gunfire. There has also been persistent speculation about the possibility that someone fired from the knoll in front of the president, instead of the sixth-floor window behind him used by Lee Harvey Oswald, identified by the Warren Commission as the sole assassin. ``Whatever their origin, the gunshot-like sounds occur exactly synchronous with the shooting,'' says the author, D.B. Thomas, who works for the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Weslaco, Texas. Thomas has a doctorate in entomology and focuses his research on fruit fly ecology, according to the USDA. His article was published in the Science & Justice, the journal of Britain's Forensic Science Society. Kennedy was killed Nov. 22, 1963, as his motorcade wound past Dealey Plaza in Dallas. The 1964 report by an official commission headed by Earl Warren, then chief justice of the Supreme Court, concluded at least two shots were fired at Kennedy, both by Oswald from the Texas School Book Depository building, located behind the motorcade. The commission rejected the suggestion that anyone other than Oswald had fired. ``There is no credible evidence that the shots were fired from the Triple Underpass, ahead of the motorcade, or from any other location,'' the Warren Commission said. The underpass is near the grassy knoll. The police recordings have a number of loud noises which might be identified as gunfire. Thomas says there are five sounds ``that have the acoustic waveform of Dealey Plaza gunfire.'' ``One of the sounds matches the echo pattern of a test shot fired from the grassy knoll,'' he wrote. Thomas' analysis is the latest done on the recorded police radio transmissions. The transmissions were on two channels: One, for routine calls, was preserved on a sound-activated Dictaphone belt. A second frequency, dedicated to the motorcade, was recorded on a sound-activated disc machine, Thomas wrote. In 1978, the House of Representatives Select Committee on Assassinations hired a Massachusetts agency to analyze the police recordings. Specialists fired test shots in Dealey Plaza, with 36 microphones placed in various locations to examine the possibility of a shot from the knoll. The committee concluded that sounds heard on an open microphone, apparently on a police motorcycle, could be shots from the grassy knoll. The Computer Sciences Department of City University, New York, also examined the recordings and concluded the sound could be a shot. In 1980, the Justice Department asked the National Research Council to analyze the data again. That review concluded there was a 78 percent probability that at least one of the bangs was a gunshot from the knoll. But the review also concluded the suspect noises were a minute later than the time Kennedy was shot. Thomas argues the National Research Council reached that conclusion because it erred in its attempts to synchronize the two police recordings. He says the council used a phrase -- ``hold everything secure'' -- which is heard on both tapes -- to synchronize the timing of events. But he said that phrase was a poor marker because problems with one of the tapes make it unclear. Thomas worked from another, clearer bit of talk from Dallas patrolman S.Q. Bellah, who is heard asking: ``You want me to hold this traffic on Stemmons until we find out something, or let it go?'' That phrase appears 180 seconds after the suspected shots on one recording, and 171 seconds later on the other recording. Allowing for a difference in tape speed of 5 percent, Thomas says the recordings match. Thomas could not be reached for comment at his office Monday. Copyright 2001 The Associated Press