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Technology Stocks : The *NEW* Frank Coluccio Technology Forum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Frank A. Coluccio who wrote (5602)	6/18/2002 2:33:57 PM
From: ftth	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 46821

On Cringly's piece: "The industry for providing homes and individual users with Internet access at speeds in excess of 500 kilobits per second is not economically viable." Well, 'economically viable' is a nebulous term, but there are certainly economic cases that can be made, and are being made, as evidenced by past posts here. ---- "The current players will either die for lack of an audience or be killed by faster, cheaper technologies such as ultra-wideband.." Jeez, give me a break. Way to jump on the latest hype. How many years before that is economically viable for in-home networks, let alone viable for the last mile. Rings of that fluorescent light nonesense in the Lieberman whitepaper. -------- "No company—ILEC or CLEC—has yet made a consistent profit on DSL. " Don't believe that is true. There are several smaller, rural ILECs that claim to be profitable (for some time now), as well as DSL deployments oversees. It all seems to point to the US incumbent's way too high operating costs. I've noticed the latest craze among equipment vendors is to "reduce incumbent's OpEx." The only handle outsiders have on incumbent OpEx is equipment cost, and management/provisioning gear. Equipment costs have already dropped significantly over the past few years, but cost to subscribers (for the end service) has still gone UP (soon to go up more). Provisioning costs have also gone down according to those very RBOCs, but they still need to raise rates to make a profit. Those equipment costs can never go to zero, and there is little room left. That leaves RBOC internal operating costs. Vendors can't do a darn thing about that, and short of axing all their staff, neither can the RBOCs. They are ill-suited to being the broadband gatekeepers. --- ". If you don't believe this, look at the declining sales and widening losses of DSL equipment makers. A simple rule of thumb in the network hardware business holds that if sales in a particular segment fall in units and dollars from one year to the next, it is time to start making something else. Look for hardware companies to leave the DSL market in droves." A good point, but fairly obvious to all but tech company execs who for some reason see DSL as their ticket out. They'll get a clue...one way the other. --- "It would be great if a lot of new DSL and cable modem companies were coming into the market to take over for the ones that have died or are dying, but that isn't happening. " Um....wwwWHY??? How would that solve anything. DSL and cable data service aren't profitable because they cost too much to operate. Why is it not obvious that outside vendors cannot solve this problem? --- "The final reason is that broadband, just like every other failed technical initiative, will be redefined, and that redefinition has already begun [UWB]." Well, right outcome, wrong driver. ---

To: Frank A. Coluccio who wrote (5602)	6/18/2002 11:16:37 PM
From: ftth	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 46821

re: "Having stated that, it's interesting that Cleland continues to put considerable weight behind the three remaining RBOCs' chances to succeed (omitting Qwest, of course) based on his assessment in the article. It would lead one to conclude that he actually understands and knows how to interpret their financial reporting" ===== Yeah, I thought it was interesting too, that he thinks the tRiBOCs come out essentially unscathed. Hard to imagine how his "industry wide" doom and gloom some how misses our friends at the monopoLECs. Maybe this quote from him gives a hint of where his head's at: "Citing the industry's "extraordinary interdependence and mandated interconnectedness," Mr. Cleland, whose analysis is widely respected, predicts that 24 of the nation's 29 top telecommunications companies that have not yet filed for bankruptcy are at risk of doing so in coming months. [Except for] Verizon, Cisco Systems, SBC and BellSouth." ==== Imagine that, "mandated interconnectedness" was a key contributor to the current state of things, with the implication, apparently, that removing all the unbundling requirements (i.e. going to an unregulated monopoly) via some soon-to-be policy will solve all the problems. Either it is wishful thinking for "his 3 sons" or he must be fairly sure that changes will happen, and fairly soon. Otherwise it's hard to imagine the tRiBOC's immunity from the plague. The scary thing is that he is pretty well plugged in to the policy circles.