Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : High Tolerance Plasticity -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Raymond Duray who wrote (5363)	6/20/2001 4:16:13 PM
From: Gottfried	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 23153

Ray, thanks for your explanation on burying fiber. It must be very difficult for the companies to make these decisions if the fiber itself becomes obsolete fast. Gottfried

To: Raymond Duray who wrote (5363)	6/20/2001 6:44:51 PM
From: energyplay	Respond to of 23153

>>The generations of fiber optic race on at greater than Moore's Law delta.<< Sounds like the hard disk industry - and we know how prosperous it's been the past ten years. >>>In plain language, we are now obsoleting plant that hasn't had a chance to pay for itself. <<< Meanwhile, R&D goes on to stuff even more bandwidth down fibers. Like cheap energy and cheap computers, cheap bandwidth will fuel economic growth. The bandwidth companies will not be the ones to capture even a fraction of the economic benefits, however.

To: Raymond Duray who wrote (5363)	6/25/2001 7:58:10 PM
From: Think4Yourself	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 23153

This fiber topic is probably dead now, but I just got back after 5 weeks on the road and wanted to add my two cents worth. About 5 months ago crews were everywhere in the detroit suburbs trenching and tunneling to install protective fiber casings. There were dozens of crews working at various locations. Started talking to them and discovered Worldcom was putting in a network. Believe they were laying 5 or 6 plastic sheathes, each about 2-3 inches in diameter. Workers had no idea why they were burying so much. Here WCOM was building a WAN with backbone capacity. Anyhow the crews disappeared about 3 months ago. poof - gone, all of them. At first I thought they were done. Then I noticed none of the connections were made between sheathe segments. They just came out of the ground and were taped up (usually). Closer inspection indicated the network was nowhere near complete. WCOM apparently simply cancelled the project after spending many millions of dollars getting all the permits, paying the crews, and laying half a network. I have since heard that WCOM has 14 fiber lines in their network. Only 5 are lit. They can nearly triple their capacity without buying a foot of new fiber. Figure their demand is growing at 15-20% per year and see how soon they need to buy any more fiber/services. We will all probably be using 6 Gigahertz PC's before a telecom recovery occurs. The folks buying telecom companies now must be very religious. Only an investor who believes in divine intervention would waste his/her time and money with so many other opportunities out there. As for me, I'm riding my Juniper short down to 18. I'll make a bet with anyone that it happens before September 30. Actually, shorting the telecoms and the ECM's has been extremely profitable over the past month. Time now to shift a little cash over to the semiconductor sector where they are as fanatically ignorant of reality today as the telecom investors were a month ago. No insult intended to any posters here. Am still skimming posts and may well come across some pretty good reasoning to be long these sectors. Folks posting here often have some remarkable insights.