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Technology Stocks : Texas Instruments - Good buy now or should we wait? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Angela who wrote (2468)	12/13/1997 1:22:00 AM
From: pat mudge	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 6180

Angela -- I'm much more capable of telling you what MediaLight isn't than telling you what it is. newsalert.com <<<MediaLight, a privately held firm based in Toronto, Canada, has broken new ground in ADSL-related communications since its founding in 1994. Among its numerous and notable "firsts" is an advanced ADSL connection management system for ATM and Frame Relay running under either Windows 95 or Windows NT operating systems. This connection management system features a highly effective graphical user interface (GUI). In addition, the company is a leader in offering PPP and IP over ATM, HDLC or Frame Relay technology.>>> When ADI says it will have a more complete ADSL/DMT system with MediaLight's management system, the ADSL line codes are from Aware Communications and they provide the silicon themselves. ADSL is the transport technology, MediaLight provides the connection management system that allows PCs to run ADSL over ATM and Frame Relay. Amati's competitors in ADSL/DMT are Aware, mentioned above; Orckit, an Israeli company who uses Harris for their silicon, I believe; and Alcatel, the French giant who won the Joint Procurement Consortium contract (4 major RBOCS) and established DMT as the likely winner in the CAP-DMT race. All other ADSL/DMT players don't have their own codes but license from one of the above and contract their silicon from either TI, MOT, ADI, or ALA-Mietec. Harris and LSI Logic also have silicon but at least in the case of LSI, it's provided on a custom basis. Amati holds the ANSI and ETSI standards and has licensed to all the chipmakers mentioned above as well as NEC/Japan (VDSL), Nortel, and PairGain. [PAIR also has ADSL/DMT, though it hasn't been released or put into trials.] At the time of the TI-AMTX buyout announcement, Amati was discussing licensing with several other major semiconductor firms. To my knowledge the only holdout is Orckit and since their partner Fujitsu has announced they'll have ANSI-compliant products, it appears they'll license. Now, however, they'll be negotiating with TI, not Amati. Westell is also an ADSL player and while they've never had their own IP, up until recently they developed products based on CAP (from Globespan). Midway through '97, when it appeared more and more major telcos were interested in DMT (BCTEL, BC, and GTE, to name a few), they announced they would develop DMT based on Motorola's CoppperGold (using Amati's ADSL). When CG was held up, WSTL made a bid to buy Amati and nearly succeeded until TI came forward with a higher offer. As for MediaLight, I'm trying to think of a parallel and can't find any that are exact. I know Amati (and Microsoft, for that matter) has a partnership with the small Irish company, Euristix, for their management system. But I think it's a bit different. Newbridge Networks has a spinoff (IPO this coming Tuesday)called CrossKeys that does management systems, but reading over the descriptions, they appear to be slightly different (no TCP/IP mentioned). I'm obviously no techie, so will leave it to others to clear this up. BTW, Siemens is also a major ADSL player and is one of Amati's strongest partners. Because of the way the deal is set up, they haven't formally licensed and now that everything's in flux, I have no idea how the relationship will be structured. I do know they've been hand-in-glove with TI since the day they announced the Amati partnership over a year ago. Ericsson, Nokia, Lucent, Nortel, in fact, everyone and his brother is or is planning on developing ADSL. Once you start putting together who's doing what with whom, it becomes incestuous real fast. And I haven't even mentioned the Networkers. Cisco, for example. Don't ever underestimate them. They're as thick as thieves with GTE and will play a major role when deployment begins. Now I'm going to tip-toe out and let someone else explain the management systems. All that GUI stuff is Greek. Hope I haven't left you more confused than when you began. Pat