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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mani1 who wrote (144054)	4/6/2002 3:32:39 AM
From: tejek	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1578433

I remember that in the trough of both past two semi cycles, everyone said there is enough manufacturing capacity for the next several years to only face a shortage 9 months later. I predict the depression in telecom will come to a sudden end and there will be a new companies creating billion for their shareholders. I am looking for somewhere to put my money and leaning toward the metro side of optical stocks. I can’t see the market appetite for telecom stock get any worse. Any thought or guidance is appreciated. Mani, funny, I saw a similar contrarian article just a few weeks ago. The premise of that article was that the current chaos in the telecom world is masking the potential for a shortage. Certainly, with companies the size of Qwest in financial trouble, its hard to believe anyone can maintain their current capex budget, let alone increase it. But this other article said that in fact the larger companies will find a way to increase their capex spending near the end of this year. Another wild card is IT spending....when wil corporations start to grow their networks again and plug them into the internet. And I agree metro is the way to go. I like CIEN especially with its recent purchase of ONIS. I also like CMVT.....and maybe ADCT. Do you still like MRVC? Any others you are looking at? Another one that is more an internet telecommunications play is ITXC. I have a small amount and plan to add slowly. I pretty much agree with your conclusions and everyone knows the time to buy these stocks is now when they are in the trough portion of their cycle. However, the problem is trying to hold them especially if the trough drags on for months....they're dead weight in your portfolio. And it doesn't help that every few months they have these false start rallies that fail. ted

To: Mani1 who wrote (144054)	4/6/2002 1:32:33 PM
From: ptanner	Respond to of 1578433

Mani, re: possible bandwidth shortage in the near future? I remain very skeptical about the once high flying communications sector. While I agree that the need for services is growing, particularly internet traffic I have never seen how there will be a substantial increase in revenue. I pay flat-rate for my cable modem so there is no relationship between my use (which is high but not growing) and the revenue I provide. This would change of course with specific fee for service such as movies on demand but I do not see these in the near future - further out? Absolutely yes. But when is uncertain and the number of very high speed connected homes will be severely limited. The article also seems a little sensationalist on the potential impacts. I don't see problems for the telecommunications segment as it (should) consume a minor portion of the bandwidth, is growing relatively slowly, and has a use it and pay for it model. I have specifically wondered about how phone companies hope to grow revenues at this point. This may be biased by my own point of view where the cost of service is so small that I already use as much as I wish and cannot really imagine increasing the amount of time that I spend on my wireless or land phone lines. My communications bills have gone only one direction in recent years: down despite basically uninhibited consumption. The article (like much popular press) also seems to mix in some ideas that seem irrelevant - ie. wi-fi for short distance data transfers. Ultimately most of the traffic of concern is long distance. And while some of the small upstarts may be allowed to fail rather than be purchased the dark fiber assets should be acquired in the liquidation as they have real potential value - just not in the near term to support the higher cost of acquiring the entire company as a package. It was interesting that the cost for balance of system costs to support the dark fiber lines was 20:1 in cost. This value is one that seems to continually drop with technological advances. And while the current downturn may be limiting widespread aggressive R&D, the big players are surely continuing their research to ensure the long life of their installed plant. Fiber optic technology has shown amazing increases... multiplexing advances have yielded enormous increases in bandwidth for relatively modest investments in equipment rather than additional lines. Similarly, caching of content (like Akamai) should become more effective at reducing long-distance loads as additional local users don't request all new information relative to prior customers so that additional fiber capacity isn't the only option. (I wish we could do something like this for water mains... but fortunately the growth here can be more readily projected or accommodated through over-sizing or long-term replacement.) In short, I would remain skeptical but agree that the more promising end of the market would be the local service providers. I also believe there should ultimately be some metering on internet bandwidth to provide a more equitable allocation of resources - sure, my bill may go up but at the same time this will provide a sustainable source of revenue for bandwidth expansion. And this metered payment system would put a dent in those sharing copyrighted materials... <vbg> -PT

To: Mani1 who wrote (144054)	4/6/2002 8:53:20 PM
From: Dan3	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1578433

Re: leaning toward the metro side of optical stocks Well MFNX will probably be the next bankruptcy, but if its market were to pick up, it would represent a heck of a buy. It's currently trading for 7 cents, down from $96 two years ago. To get back to where it was 2 years ago, it will have to rise 130,000 percent! If there's an impending shortage, nobody else is seeing it coming. :-) Customers can take advantage of MFN's complete, end-to-end solution or select individual components to complement their existing infrastructures. By leasing MFN's metropolitan and regional fiber, customers can create their own, private optical network with virtually unlimited, un-metered bandwidth at a fixed fee. For more reliable, secure and high-performance Internet connectivity, customers can use MFN's private IP network to communicate globally without ever touching the public-switched network. Moreover, MFN's comprehensive managed services enable companies to create a world-class Internet presence, optimize complex sites and private optical networks, and transform legacy applications, all with a single point of contact. PAIX.net, Inc., a subsidiary of MFN and the original neutral Internet exchange, offers secure, Class A co-location facilities where ISPs and other Internet-centric companies can form public and private peering relationships with each other, and have access to multiple telecommunications carriers for circuits within each facility.