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Strategies & Market Trends : Cable and Wireless (CWP) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: techreports who wrote (146)	3/28/2002 9:31:37 AM
From: Tumbleweed	Respond to of 162

I read something that said the real value at Level3 is the rights of passage and other passage ways other carriers would not get permission to build a network. Probably was true 2 years ago, but who is building networks now? Cheaper to buy a dying carrier! Tw

To: techreports who wrote (146)	3/28/2002 5:57:56 PM
From: CIMA	Respond to of 162

CWP looks good amongst the competition IMO: A look at its down-and-out rivals suggests BCE has further to fall (gam) Eric Reguly First the good news. BCE shares haven't declined nearly as much as those of some international rivals'. Now the bad. This could change. Forget the dot-coms. If you want to see destruction of value on a global scale, look no further than the big phone companies. Deutsche Telekom,Europe's biggest player, has gone from a peak of 98 euros in 2000 to about 17 euros -- a decline of 83 per cent. France Télécom has fallen by a similar amount. Both carry crushing debt loads and face financial overhauls that promise to be exceedingly painful for equity and debt holders (and the government agencies that partly own them). BT Group, formerly British Telecom, trades at one-quarter of its high and has been blowing management out the door like so many promotional flyers. In the United States, the telecoms landscape is not nearly as ugly, but it's not pretty either. The Big Four so-called ILECs -- incumbent local exchange carriers -- are all well off their peaks. Verizon, BellSouth and SBC Communications,the company that owns 20 per cent of BCE's Bell Canada unit, are down roughly 30 per cent. The true dog is Qwest Communications, which has gone from $55 (U.S.) to $8. All four ran nearly $10-billion in negative free cash flow from mid-2000 to mid-2001 and are attempting to reverse the situation by gutting capital expenditures. Global Crossing and 360networks are in bankruptcy protection. Their competitor, BCE's Teleglobe, is ailing and could follow the same route. How did they get into this mess? While each company used different strategies to meet the peculiarities of their domestic markets, a few common themes emerge. By the mid-1990s, it was apparent that voice traffic had flattened out and that the growth would come from data transmission and, especially, video: Video uploading, downloading, conferencing, video on demand. The video revolution and its huge appetite for bandwidth would fill the phone companies' pipes to the bursting point and the freight fees would shower investors with riches. So the companies loaded up on debt and spent lavishly to improve their networks. If they didn't spend, new competing carriers and the cable companies would. Investors demanded growth, and Wall Street was eager to finance the effort. Some companies went one step further and bought content -- in BCE's case, it was CTV and The Globe and Mail -- to add some sparkle to their growth strategies. France Télécom and Deutsche Telekom, for their part, loaded up on stupidly expensive wireless licences. By last year, the nightmare scenario was unfolding like a slow-motion train wreck. Video and other broadband-hungry services did not, in fact, meet with hot demand, and the phone companies found themselves in a bind. They were stuck with a commodity business -- that is, prices would only go down -- at a time when capital expenditures were unusually high. It gets worse. At the same time, customer connections sold by the largest carriers were falling, thanks to competition from cable modems and cellphone networks. North River Ventures, a New York telecoms consultancy, estimates that Verizon and the rest of the Big Four have been losing 1 per cent of their customers every quarter for the past two years. This doesn't sound like much, but it comes at a big cost. If you take the total capital expenditures divided by the net number of new lines, the figure reveals that the companies are actually spending capital to disconnect customers. How to get out of this trap? Faced with negative free cash flow, the solution is to slash capital expenditures. Doing this, of course, presents other problems. If capital expenditures vanish, then upgrades vanish with them, leaving the subterranean networks incapable of meeting the demands for broadband video services, such as DVD burning, which will inevitably come. This, in turn, creates another trap. If the capital structure doesn't exist to keep upgrading the network, the capital structure itself will have to be changed. Debt will have to be eliminated, costs will have to come down. This is why the European and American phone companies face massive financial restructurings. Mergers will be inevitable. And BCE? BCE also has negative free cash flow; the money it pays out in capital expenditures and dividends is more than it takes in. It too overpaid for acquisitions, notably Teleglobe, which are proving a net drain on the parent. And it appears to be losing market share. Bell Canada's residential and business line market share fell from 96.8 per cent in the first quarter of last year to 95.8 per cent in the past quarter. This does not mean that BCE is doomed. It, unlike most of its rivals, has a strong brand name in Bell and uses it well. While it is losing local market share, its high-speed Internet access business is growing fast. It also has a newish top layer of management that is probably asking all the hard questions. But this does not mean BCE is saved, either. At minimum, a potentially gruesome financial re-engineering effort seems in store, one that may come with a dividend reduction. The fate of BCE's rivals says things will get worse before they get better. ereguly@globeandmail.ca

To: techreports who wrote (146)	3/29/2002 7:15:39 PM
From: CIMA	Respond to of 162

Leading Analyst Firm Recognizes Cable & Wireless as a 'Leader' in the Web Hosting Marketplace (prnews) SANTA CLARA, Calif., March 21 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- In its 2002 North American Web Hosting Magic Quadrant, Gartner has positioned Cable & Wireless (NYSE: CWP) and Exodus, its US web hosting business, in the "Leaders" quadrant based on the company's "Ability to Execute" and "Completeness of Vision." Gartner's Magic Quadrant report, a graphical portrayal of vendor performance in a particular market segment, positions hosting service providers in one of four quadrants: Niche Players, Visionaries, Challengers and Leaders. According to Gartner, leaders are vendors that are performing well today, have a clear vision of market direction and are actively building competencies to sustain their leadership position in the market. "Cable & Wireless and its Exodus business are pleased to have been recognized by Gartner in the leader quadrant. The combination of Exodus, Digital Island and Cable & Wireless enables us to offer enterprise customers unparalleled network and hosting solutions and the expertise to meet their business needs," said Bill Austin, chief executive officer, Exodus. Under the brand name of Exodus in the US, Cable & Wireless offers a complete suite of hosting services including managed hosting, collocation, managed security and managed storage services. This suite is being completely integrated with Digital Island's established family of content delivery and streaming technologies. According to Gartner, a new evaluation criterion added to this year's list is financial stability. "With the investment pool almost dry, it doesn't matter how good a company is if it won't have the funds to finish out the year or to reach eventual profitability," the report states. About Exodus, a Cable & Wireless Service Beginning April 1, 2002, all hosting and content delivery services historically offered by Cable & Wireless, Digital Island and Exodus will be managed by one business division and marketed in the U.S. as Exodus, a Cable & Wireless Service and in the rest of the world as Cable & Wireless. Supported by Cable & Wireless' powerful global infrastructure and financial strength, the combined business is uniquely positioned to provide managed hosting and interactive web services for business customers. About Cable & Wireless Cable & Wireless is a major global telecommunications business with revenue of over 8 billion pounds sterling (US$11 billion) in the year to 31 March 2001 and customers in 70 countries and consists of two core and complementary divisions: Cable & Wireless Regional and Cable & Wireless Global. Cable & Wireless Regional offers a full range of telecommunications services in 35 countries around the world. Cable & Wireless Global's focus for future growth is on IP (Internet protocol) and data services and solutions for business customers. It has developed advanced IP networks and value-added services in the US, Europe and the Asia-Pacific region in support of this strategy. With its financial strength and the capability of its global IP infrastructure, Cable & Wireless holds a unique position in terms of global coverage and services to business customers. For more information about Cable & Wireless, go to www.cw.com. The Magic Quadrant is copyrighted March 2002 by Gartner, Inc. and is reused with permission. Gartner's permission to print or reference its Magic Quadrant should not be deemed to be an endorsement of any company or product depicted in the quadrant. The Magic Quadrant is Gartner's opinion and is an analytical representation of a marketplace at and for a specific time period. It measures vendors against Gartner-defined criteria for a marketplace. The positioning of vendors within a Magic Quadrant is based on the complex interplay of many factors. Gartner does not advise enterprises to select only those firms in the Leaders segment. In some situations, firms in the Visionary, Challenger, or Niche Player segments may be the right match for an enterprise's requirements. Well-informed vendor selection decisions should rely on more than a Magic Quadrant. Gartner research is intended to be one of many information sources including other published information and direct analyst interaction. Gartner expressly disclaims all warranties, express or implied of fitness of this research for a particular purpose. This news release contains certain forward-looking statements, including, without limitation, statements concerning Cable & Wireless' and Digital Island's operations, economic performance and financial condition. These forward-looking statements are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of their dates. Actual results could differ materially from the results referred to in the forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are based largely on Cable & Wireless' and Digital Island's current expectations and are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties, including, without limitation, changes in external market factors, changes in business or growth strategy or an inability to execute strategy due to changes in such company's industry or the economy generally, the emergence of new or growing competitors, various other competitive factors and other risks and uncertainties indicated from time to time in Cable & Wireless' and Digital Island's filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. In light of these risks and uncertainties, there can be no assurance that the results referred to in the forward-looking statements contained in this news release will in fact occur. Additionally, neither Cable & Wireless nor Digital Island makes any commitment to disclose any revisions to forward-looking statements, or any facts, events or circumstances after the date hereof that may bear upon forward-looking statements. MAKE YOUR OPINION COUNT - Click Here tbutton.prnewswire.com SOURCE Exodus CONTACT: Melissa Neumann of Exodus, +1-408-346-2305, or Melissa.Neumann@exodus.net; or U.S. Media, Brian Davis of Brodeur, +1-202-715-0514, bdavis@brodeur.com, for Exodus; or Lyndsay Barrett, 44 20 7759 8216, lbarrett@digisle.net, or UK media and analysts, Tara Salgado, 020 7315 4184, or tara.salgado@cw.com, both for Cable & Wireless

To: techreports who wrote (146)	4/7/2002 2:13:10 PM
From: CIMA	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 162

UK PRESS: C&W Calls For Break-Up Of BT's Telecom Group (djones) LONDON -(Dow Jones)- Cable & Wireless PLC (CWP) is asking the U.K. government to investigate allegedly anti-competitive behavior by BT Group PLC (BTY) and force a breakup of BT's telecommunications group, according to a report in the Sunday Times. C&W is calling for a spin-off of BT's network business because it says regulation has failed to ensure competition, the Times reported. -Henry J. Pulizzi; Dow Jones Newswires; 44 207 842 9316; henry.pulizzi@ dowjones.com (This story was originally published by Dow Jones Newswires) Copyright (c) 2002 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved