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Technology Stocks : Ascend Communications (ASND) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Zach who wrote (21849)	11/7/1997 3:04:00 PM
From: jhild	Respond to of 61433

Unicode typically should require more bytes for text transmission, but not any impact for images. While text may be twice, or even three times less compact than say straight ASCII, text compresses well. So if the world were UNICODE, yes you would need more bandwidth, but I would expect that domestically it would make little difference. In Asia the effect on text traffic is probably greater, though over what they are currently using I couldn't say. Bottom line I don't see it as a compelling factor in demand for capacity from Unicode effects, if ever fully adopted. Increases in transmission rates are creating a far bigger effect. As in I want to get a cable modem that is going to be roughly 20 times faster than my current x2 56K modem. Now there's impact if everyone does the same thing. And of course it's not going to stop there. Too much is never enough. So impact to ASND and ISPs from Unicode alone? I would say none. So do they have to have ever higher capacities? You bet. But for other reasons.