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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 (11485)	6/19/2001 2:31:54 PM
From: Crossy	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 12823

Ray, now I'm finding myself right into the debate that I wanted to avoid initially. <g> Well I'm of course influenced by academia but that'S only part of the story. OTOH I have always had a real world job (if you elect to think that academia is part of the fake world <g>). Again you infer a value judgement: "Say's theorem Academic poppycock IMNVHO" - again here is belief vs. belief. All based on corporate welfare ? Sorry but that is just not true. The rise of CSCO is NOT fueled by corporate welfare nor the rise of INTC or most other industries. Corporate welfare IMHO is rooted in the "capture phenomenon" where a behemoth like institution seeing itself under pressure "catpures" part of the political establishment in order to fend off attacks on the MARKETPLACE FRONTS. On your railroad example "Why did the railroads succeed, especially in the US in the wild territories of this country in the mid-19th Century? Because of vast givings of public land to the railroad developers" I thought that land was virtually free in the US 100 years ago in open space areas. It appears unfair to me to appraise yesterday's reality with the values of today. I think that if you brought up today's prices of public land (and the nowadays required land uses authorizations) to the inhabitants of that era they would have dismissed your ideas immediately. "Why did the airline industry succeed? Because of vast public investment in infrastructure" I think that there are fees paid by airlines for the use of airport facilities (indirectly by passengers) Public invesment ? My initial reaction to this is some hostility towards the concept. But then I realize that there are effects gained at a certain level that didn't exist before. So I'm pretty positively predisposed to the public "nourishing" nextgen infrastructure (case in point: the Internet) Did you realize something: all your examples arise from service industries that underly a NETWORK STRUCTURE as conduit (airports, railways, networks) ? "The private sector is simply too venal, too profit-oriented and too short of attention span to deal with the real big picture" Your denouncemnt of the private sector apart, there is some point in the view that shortterm profit goals impede longterm investment horizons. Add the credit crunch of last year and it will amplify this trend. But take another view: the US government was always quite market oriented (Democrats and GOP alike) and when you read some blueprints on national infrastructure of the US (1995 - NRC "The unpredictable certainty") which had in it a "vision" as to the development of broadband then you will get a glimpse of the "underlying" motivation of the administrtion back then (and in my view the view of the current admin is not really different in this respect) that they would like to tilt the balance to the desired goal (toward an open, bidirectional network) in small steps, thru FCC orders & laws (Telecom Act of 1996 I do see as falling right here) on a micro level. Instead of financing the WHOLE ENVISAGED INFRASTRUCTURE from a centrally planned architecture I do sense a tilt in the regulatory framework of the US to unleash market powers, sometimes in an artificially constructed way (CLECs) and then to apply some refined regulatory pressure (as Kennard's FCC did) to tilt the process towards the desired direction. To a market oriented individual like myself this is only a second best (of course) but where is no market, just a set of monopolies it's a second best I can live with. Even if some doomsayers say that 5 million people on broadband in the US or more are way too few (I again contest this) this is way better IMHO than 50% on broadband by government fiat. Investing is a disovery process. Especially in technology niches. There's no guaranteed road to the pot of gold. Regardless whether you are a customer or an investor you can only look at the market as it is NOW and work from there. Without an icentive to build networks private sector enterprises certainly won't build them (again Say's theorem) and I personally hold the view of MikeM that there is no way back now that T,Charter,Cox,Cablevision finally created a faster alternative to the dial up. Now the ball is in the court of the ILECs to accelerate xDSL deployment. Whether they like it or not they have to up the ante or they will be gone. Meanwhile the remaining sounder financed CLECs start eating away the whole business segment with unbunndling, FTTH and BBFW - so the ILECs have to adress this too and finally bite the bullet with regard to T1 cannibalization. A discovery process takes time. And time is short. That may be the problem.... best rgrds CROSSY