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To: GraceZ who wrote (28628)	7/17/2001 5:47:21 PM
From: GraceZ	Respond to of 29970

Interesting: industryclick.com Opening the Gates by Kevin Fitchard SPECIAL REPORT: AT&T Broadband/Comcast, Jul 16 2001 Who else will bid on AT&T's cable unit? Whether Ma Bell likes it or not, AT&T Broadband is on the auction block, thanks to Comcast. Analysts predict it won't be long before cable and media companies-maybe even a certain software giant-start dangling their own offers in front of the AT&T board. The list of interested parties is long and diverse: Viacom, News Corp., Walt Disney, Liberty Media, AOL Time Warner, Cox Communications and Charter Communications all have been named as potential bidders, either individually or in partnership. But perhaps the most surprising candidate is Microsoft. The software maker's in-your-face Internet strategy is nothing new. But its broadband-access strategy is still up in the air, as a result of questionable strategic positioning (its snafu over set-top box technology) and bad investments (its strategic partnership with now-defunct NorthPoint Communications). The lure of acquiring a cable network on par with AOL Time Warner's holdings--or at least controlling such a network through a partnership--may be too good an opportunity for Microsoft to pass up, said Cynthia Brumfield, president of Broadband Intelligence. The lure of acquiring a cable network on par with AOL Time Warner's holdings--or at least controlling such a network through a partnership--may be too good an opportunity for Microsoft to pass up, said Cynthia Brumfield, president of Broadband Intelligence. "Microsoft has absolutely no distribution. They have no broadband platform, while AOL has Time Warner," Brumfield said. "Microsoft certainly views AOL as a competitor, and it will be looking for ways to even the playing field." Microsoft likely would look to partner with Comcast if a bidding war raises the stakes, Brumfield said. Microsoft already holds an 11% stake in Comcast, as well as a small piece of AT&T. There's also precedence. In 1997, Microsoft and Comcast submitted an under-the-table bid for a 25% stake in Tele-Communications Inc., before AT&T eventually acquired the property. Other likely candidates include a consortium of cable and media companies that would divide the AT&T Broadband's assets among them. But a fire sale on the unit's assets is unlikely, said Keith Kennebeck, analyst for The Strategis Group. "AT&T is pretty reluctant to sell the entire entity, so to bring in another [multiple systems operator] and divvy it up isn't likely," he said. "They don't want to do the deal if they aren't part of a larger corporate structure. They want to be part of the management." But Comcast is clearly the front-runner, said Sharon Armbrust, an analyst for the Kagan Group. Aside from AOL Time Warner, no other cable company has the financial might to pull off the deal, and media conglomerates like Viacom, Disney and News Corp. lack cable experience. © 2001, IndustryClick Corp., a PRIMEDIA company. All rights reserved. This article is protected by United States copyright and other intellectual property laws and may not be reproduced, rewritten, distributed, redisseminated, transmitted, displayed, published or broadcast, directly or indirectly, in any medium without the prior written permission of IndustryClick Corp industryclick.com AT&T Broadband, the company's cable arm, represents AT&T's largest growth area. Whether Comcast is successful in convincing shareholders to accept its $58 billion bid or another cable-hungry suitor emerges with a better offer, AT&T's outlook is bleak without its Broadband unit to bank on.

To: GraceZ who wrote (28628)	7/17/2001 7:17:10 PM
From: KailuaBoy	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 29970

Grace, When it comes to Narad Networks, neither of its co-founders, Dev Gupta and Andy Chapman, is prone to understatement. "This is the next-generation Internet," says CEO Gupta. Adds Chapman, who heads the company's marketing: "We will be the Intel of the bandwidth space." The above is a worn out, throw away cliche. Disregard it completely except for the fact that it should cause you to check into these two guys backgrounds. I did and they seem to be a development shop for Cisco. This is the third business they have co-founded. The other two they sold to Cisco after a year or two. Both companies were in the same space this one is in (forgive my dangling participle). These are fighting words in the technology world, but if this duo succeeds, they'll be entitled to boast. They're planning nothing short of a broadband revolution. Whatever. I got their broadband revolution. So does TJ, Bell, Northpoint, Covad, all CDNs, everything streaming, etc. Narad wants to turn today's typical cable television system--a combination of optical fiber and coaxial cable--into a switched digital network offering speeds of 100 megabits per second, about 200 times faster than a cable modem today. Now we're getting somewhere. Say these guys succeed. Now you have a waaaay fast last mile. What are you going to do with it? What application will run better when you have greasy fast access? That needs to be answered. This could help solve the biggest single problem facing the entire tech industry: the lack of real broadband into homes and small businesses. This is not true. More marketing weenies making useless statements. Broadband applications invented to fill a consumer need have to emerge. Then someone may care about cable modems that are really fast instead of just fast. That's the problem with ATHM today. No compelling reason to switch other than "it's faster". That's nice and it plays a part in keeping ATHM around when others would have paid for Georgebellian management with a trip to the soup kitchen, but it's not a "gotta have it" differentiator. Narad's technology uses the cable network much the way ADSL technology uses phone lines--sending more capacious signals on the same hardware at higher frequencies. It has also developed accompanying software that allows customers to order movies, or even new phone lines, online and get immediate delivery. They have to back that crap up before I bite. What are they talking about and how does it work? How does it do anything other than place a service order for phone service with the local MSO or phone company? Does it solve all the problems with VoIP? Does it provide consolidated billing? Does it present something other than a Fred Flintstone interface that's available now compliments of the local Satellite or cable provider? If it does all of that and is affordable, send me a sales rep with a contract. Says Leslie Ellis, a longtime cable technology analyst based in Denver: "The more you hear about this, the more you wonder why nobody ever did it before." While none of Narad's architecture--which includes three semiconductor technologies and two software systems--is yet installed anywhere, Chapman says that by October, four major cable operators will be testing it. I tried to look Leslie Ellis up but was only able to locate a disbarred lawyer from North Dakota. court.state.nd.us I have no idea who the one asking "why nobody ever did it before." is. (More forgiveness for the misplaced participle please). She seems confused. Narad's pedigree is impressive. This is true. I checked on him. He understands underlying technologies and he understands consumers. Networking pioneer Bob Metcalfe made Narad his first investment as a venture capitalist with Polaris Venture Partners. Name dropping. I don't care about Metcalfe's investing any more than I care about Paul Allen's. Great engineers make lousy investors. Gupta, a Bell Labs veteran, invented bandwidth-enhancing technologies for the telephone network. And he and Chapman have launched and sold two successful networking companies. He's an engineer and the other one's an Ivy League bean counter. They developed a couple of products for Cisco. Good for them. The company has chosen the right platform for ambition this vast. No other infrastructure matches the capacity of the cable pipe. Marketing. The jury will disregard the above statement. Gupta's initial plan of attack: Help cable companies target small businesses, which spend far more than consumers on communications. That should underwrite the modest costs of launching Narad's services. Uhhh. Wait a minute. What happened to vast ambition? What happened to the next generation Internet? Modest costs? If these guys follow the formula they've established they will run this business for a couple of years and then sell it to a cable company for between $100M and $140M. That's what they've done twice before only now Cisco doesn't have money. These guys may have a cool piece of the puzzle, maybe not. They don't say much about the details. But the bottom line is that they are just dressing up the one piece, not building the next generation Internet. Lofty ambition my butt. The bold claims go on and on. "Now what [Narad] has to do is prove them," says Ellis. "Making technology actually work is always the hardest part." True, but our gut says these guys could succeed. How many shares of this company can the author buy with his gut? Show me where I can look up the track record of this claim spouting gut. I want to know what this gut thinks about bundling, VOD, ubiquity and broadband applications. Bring me this gut! KB