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To: Seeker of Truth who wrote (96468)	3/30/2001 2:27:29 PM
From: engineer	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 152472

take one industry alone. Cable modems, one of hte fastest growing things around. they spend $300-500 per house to purchase a cable modem. then they spend another $100-200 on installation. So if they just took to putting HDR repeaters on telephone poles and handed out HDR modem cards,they can take that installation down to $150 for the HDR modem and somewhere around $50-100 for overhead on that installation. they would use their existing cable distribution to the local neighborhoods and then use HDR in teh last mile for the house to house wiring. Look for COX/Sanders to do this any day. The first year savings is alot. Next take the business traveler and fixed business world. Alot of the hotels are now upgrading to fixed 10baseT connectiosn in hotel rooms. If they put this as HDR nodes,then they can offer this thruout the holtel and grounds and everywhere. Much eaier to install and retrofit than ripping out walls and running cat 5 cable. And this extends to all teh ancillary biz traveler locations as well. Airports, travel lounges, rental car locations, gas stations etc. there is alot of information out there that is useful for the mobile person, jsut not tapped yet. Look for Wingcast to explore alot of this. SOON.

To: Seeker of Truth who wrote (96468)	3/30/2001 3:23:48 PM
From: JohnG	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 152472

Euro Bureaucrats make Poor Businessmen. Huge Debts Hobble Europe's Telecoms By William Drozdiak Washington Post Foreign Service Thursday, March 29, 2001; Page E01 BRUSSELS, March 28 -- Europe justly boasts of supremacy in at least one major high-tech industry, the business of mobile telephones. Britain's Vodafone is the world's largest network operator, Finland's Nokia is the leader in making mobile phones and Sweden's Ericsson is considered the top equipment supplier. More than 60 percent of the people living in the European Union own cellular phones, compared with about 40 percent in the United States. So when European nations held a series of auctions last year for the rights to transmit over airwaves to offer new high-speed Internet services on mobile phones -- known in industry jargon as third-generation or "3G" wireless services -- the major telephone companies bid up the licenses with abandon, assuming incalculable profits to come. For governments, the auctions seemed a convenient and painless way to share in the bounty. They collected more than $100 billion in license fees. But now those prices seem exorbitant by any conventional measure, and the profits seem far from assured. Credit agencies promptly slashed the ratings of most of the winners, and their stocks plummeted. What once seemed to be a government coup now looks like a policy disaster that imposed an intolerable burden on some of Europe's most prominent enterprises, triggered a wave of bankruptcies and threatened the banks behind the spending. With the telephone companies now owing enormous fees and their stocks far below their highs, the prospect of spending another $100 billion or so to build the 3G networks has pushed many to the breaking point. The chief executives of Deutsche Telekom, France Telecom and British Telecommunications -- three former state monopolies that rank among the leviathans of Europe's telephone industry -- are all under pressure to leave their posts for having accumulated huge debts over the past year. Some financial analysts believe it will take at least a decade for those companies to recover, if they ever do. "Europe has shot itself in the foot," said Peter Cochrane, BT's former head of technology. "These auctions were a really good study in madness. It was a bit like lemmings going over the edge of a cliff." He predicted that 3G technology will be a bust and that those companies -- once regarded as Europe's bluest chips -- will collapse under the strain of their debts. BT Chairman Iain Vallance and Chief Executive Peter Bonfield are facing a revolt by shareholders who want them ousted for leading the company into such a parlous condition. BT's shares have lost two-thirds of their value, debt has soared to $43 billion through its aggressive pursuit of 3G licenses, and its credit rating is now threatened with junk bond status. Similarly, France Telecom's chief executive, Michel Bon, is struggling to appease investors who have watched the value of their stock plummet by 75 percent this year. Bon has tried to keep creditors at bay by selling off assets to pay down about $55 billion in debt, but a recent spinoff of its wireless operator, Orange PLC, reaped only $6 billion. As a result, Bon was forced to launch the biggest corporate bond sale in history, worth $16 billion, to raise as much money as possible before credit markets shut their doors. And at Deutsche Telekom, chief executive Ron Sommer has been waging the same battles -- trying to cope with $54 billion in debt, lawsuits from investors and credit downgrades that have reduced confidence in his stewardship. One of the biggest problems faced by Europe's three major phone companies -- which together accumulated more than $120 billion in debt over the past year -- is the danger that their obligations will undermine their ability to compete with less-encumbered foreign operators. Japan, for example, awarded its 3G licenses for virtually nothing, which will give national champions such as NTT DoCoMo a big advantage in the race to supply advanced wireless technology to business. Just a year ago, no price seemed too high to pay for the licenses. But now, doubts have arisen about when 3G phones will reach the market and whether they will ever be profitable enough to justify the enormous investment. The credit crunch facing Europe's telecom industry is rippling across the whole economy. Banks have been getting nervous about $200 billion in loans to the phone companies, particularly after an alarming report recently by Morgan Stanley Dean Witter titled "The Telecom Debt Iceberg." The fact that the companies are clamoring for another $90 billion to $115 billion to build their new wireless franchises -- when the global economy appears headed for rough times -- arouses fear of future defaults. Fearing that Europe may lose its global primacy in mobile telephone service because of what some portray as the greed of governments to collect license fees, the EU's executive commission has urged the phone companies to pool resources in building 3G systems. But Ewan Sutherland, head of Europe's leading consumer protection group in the telecommunications industry, warns that "there should be an obligation to show that there's a clear benefit for the user" in stifling free market competition and allowing the phone companies to collaborate to ease their debt pressures. "There should be some safeguards to protect the consumer and permit enough competition," said Erkki Liikanen, the EU's commissioner for information technology. "But at the same time, investors in the wireless sector need to know that Europe has a long-term commitment to success in the field of third generation networks and that we do not want to add to the burdens on the operators."

To: Seeker of Truth who wrote (96468)	3/30/2001 4:53:08 PM
From: Uncle Frank	Respond to of 152472

>> My question is who of importance will need <wireless data>? A very large and growing percentage of business people and students carry PDA's these days. Audiovox plans integrated PDA/phone HAUPPAUGE, N.Y.—Audiovox Communications Corp. announced plans for an integrated personal digital assistant and wireless phone, to be introduced in the third quarter of this year. According to Audiovox, the wireless information communicator will be third-generation cdma2000 1x-ready, and will work with carriers supporting the 3G network. The device is expected to offer digital calling capabilities through a hands-free attachment and should enable consumers to access the Internet, make notes, make calls, and watch video sequences. “Timing is crucial,” said Philip Christopher, president and chief executive officer of Audiovox. “Audiovox is preparing to introduce its combination personal digital assistant and cellular phone just as U.S. carriers will begin to implement 1x technology. The PDA/phone is the optimal wireless communications tool for consumers to take full advantage of the power of 1x technology.” rcrnews.com

To: Seeker of Truth who wrote (96468)	3/30/2001 11:19:51 PM
From: waverider	Respond to of 152472

Exactly. <H>