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Technology Stocks : Lucent Technologies (LU) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: sylvester80 who wrote (19634)	3/25/2002 7:50:10 PM
From: JeffT	Respond to of 21876

Good post. Thanks. Jeff

To: sylvester80 who wrote (19634)	3/26/2002 1:41:14 PM
From: Sabrejet	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 21876

Good afternoon. It looks as though there is some "selling" today in LU on no news. I would be guessing as to the person or institution who is doing it but, heck, I'm use to it! As far as a trading pattern is concerned, we usually get a nice bounce after events like this. Again, I'm guessing here but the ask blocks have put a lot of pressure on the stock today. Sabre!

To: sylvester80 who wrote (19634)	3/30/2002 3:05:05 PM
From: elmatador	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 21876

I want USA Today Kevin to interview me before they write his next article: Hi Kevin! Your article "Many fiber-optic lines unused despite rising demand" have caused me to engage on a discussion on Silicon Investor. I disagreed with it. I would like to say that: Fiber optics are an asset that has been always underutilized. There are technologies that are always trying to milk it for more performance and capacity. Fiber started being deployed in substitution of copper (PCM technology) in the trunk junction, i.e., in between central offices it was certainly underutilized. Then it went on to replace coaxial cable across countries and transcontinental routes. Telcos made money in long distance and business and subsidized the local calls. So there was not shortage of money to build fiber lines. When fiber starting going long-distance it started also replacing microwave links. And it required redundancy path redundancy. But fiber need a physical path to cross. So right of way were put at premium prices. Oil and gas companies owned rights of way started building fiber lines along its already owned right of way. The routes didn't go from where the traffic was to where the traffic needed to reach. But only across the paths that were owned by those companies. Like here. The electrical utilities put fibers inside its ground wires piggybacking 500Kvolts electricity transmission lines. They run across the land but always end at a substation where the high-voltage transmission line ends. Yes, there is a lot of fiber underground. But they are connecting the right places. So those ones will have little chances to be lit. If offered for a user, you have to run a spur from the substation to downtown where all the gear that concentrates traffic is. That's is cost justified if you have mammoth traffic. But if you have little traffic, it is cheaper to lease from the operator. Note that to launch a fiber optic bundle it is better to over build it. So that you are not building a parallel bundle in a couple of years. Just imagining the engineering work to put an new ground cable on top of half million Volts AC line, line that cross over tough terrain and don't follow roads. The same can be said if you put at the ocean floor or stick it inside a gas pipeline. That's the kind of thing that you wont like to do every year or two. The operators build redundancy -usually in a ring configuration, so that if any path is cut, ALL the traffic can run in the opposite direction. There is a always capacity idle. This idle capacity is sold -cheaper- to ISP's but if the operator traffic is cut in fraction of seconds it is redirected. But the ISP traffic is dumped and redirection of this traffic takes time. When you hear QoS people are talking not only at guaranteed bandwidth, but as well as traffic that is not dumped in case of failure. Traffic from Sabre or Amadeus airtravel reservation system is a bit different than our dial up Internet! In fact it has a dedicated operator Equant connect them. You see not your average ISP bandwidth provider. Now if traffic zooms up, this is what is going to happen. You have four fibers connect today in a certain route. Two for the main path and two standing by. Guys go there overnight, take the old box connecting to two fibers of the standing by route. Connect a new super box that can pump more capacity over the existing fibers. Line-up the gear and check if its OK. Switch some traffic into it. Check for reliability. Once satisfied the guys switch over the whole traffic into it and repeat the operation in the main fiber line. Still the same four fibers are utilized. Like airports and oil terminals. Build bigger planes. Build bigger super tankers and use the same airports and the same terminals. There will be a big market to build spurs. That is, short fiber connections to where those existing fibers are. As there is those airlines that serve as feeders to the big airports.