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.

Technology Stocks : Cisco Systems, Inc. (CSCO) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: larry who wrote (55958)	10/15/2001 8:33:57 PM
From: RetiredNow	Respond to of 77400

Hi Larry, I agree that from the time of the bubble it was a good guess that it would take a couple of years before IT spending would resume reasonable growth rates. Well, guess what? IT spending began to decline in the first quarter of 2000. It's already been a year and a half. So my guess is by 2nd quarter of 2002, we'll see IT spending resume reasonable growth rates. Time sure does fly when times are bad, doesn't it?

To: larry who wrote (55958)	10/15/2001 11:06:38 PM
From: Eric	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 77400

Larry The tough nut to crack in the growth equation is how fast the existing IT infrastructure gets torn out do to increasing traffic. I hate a copper based system since it has just about maxed out with the existing telephone system. The thing that is amazing is how little the telephone system changed for over 70 years. In over a hundred years we are still tied to the copper wire. The copper wire has huge bandwidth limitations. I'm used to dealing with coaxial cable which is a pretty mature technology but our poor old phone system is a system based on two copper wires which has not changed in that over one hundred year period which I mentioned above. As more and more people get DSL that will put further pressure on the existing infrastructure. Optical fiber distribution is the only way to go as more and more people want wider bandwidth connections. Not only that but there will be a tremendous reduction in interference problems with other services (wireless). Some like wireless but we are bandwidth limited in that area and Optical fiber has billions and billions more capacity than wireless. As an engineer I'm really looking forward to an all optical network for terrestrial services. I expect copper wire to be dead for distribution in about 10 to 15 years. It will be much cheaper and much more reliable for phone and cable companies to switch to optical fiber. We are in a short term tough situation since companies had to get Y2K compliant (or so they thought!) and as you mentioned they bought into a replacement cycle much too early in many cases. When the dust settles in a few years I fully expect telcom spending to take off big time again. By then state of the art technologies will offer all of us, providers and consumers a much better overall system. Some think it might be a joke for Cisco to get to $200 billion in sales. But I think it is very possible. It's not pie in the sky when I look at the possibilities. Cisco is becoming a "mature" growth company. It's heady fast growth days are over but the growth in this industry has only just begun. I believe when we look back from 20 to 30 years in the future we will be amazed how much IT has changed. JMHO Eric