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Technology Stocks : Qwest Communications (Q) (formerly QWST) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mathon Dabasir who wrote (537)	1/7/1998 4:03:00 PM
From: Tim Bagwell	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 6846

Some news on competition in the voice-over-IP market. Apparently WCOM likes the idea. WESTLAKE VILLAGE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 7, 1998--Franklin Telecom (OTC/BB:FTEL - news) Wednesday announced that its Internet subsidiary, FNet Corp., has signed a letter of intent with WorldCom to collocate Tempest Data Voice Gateways in WorldCom sites. WorldCom has POP sites that cover the entire world. Initial deployment will be to major cities in the United States. The subsequent definitive agreement will facilitate the rollout of the previously announced FNet Internet telephone network (''FNet Announces Premier InterNet Telephone Network'' -- Oct. 27, 1997). The Tempest allows FNet to support telephone-to-telephone service over a national network, using voice-over-IP technology developed by FNet's parent company, Franklin Telecom. According to Franklin's president and chief executive officer, Frank Peters: ''After signing a definitive agreement with WorldCom, we should be able to provide coverage from Washington state to Florida, California to Maine. It will include all major metropolitan areas. With the deployment of these Tempests, FNet's telephone service will be available to most of the U.S. population by making a simple, local call.'' In addition, the WorldCom agreement will allow early deployment to key overseas locations. Peters continued: ''One of our priorities is to provide FNet coverage to international locations which are important to American-based multinational corporations. We are pleased that our arrangement with WorldCom will allow us to move into this area more quickly than we anticipated. ''The Franklin Tempest Data Voice Gateways will be interconnected by a private intranet and the public Internet, thus providing very low-cost telephone service through our global telephone network.'' According to Peter Thornton, vice president of sales: ''The move toward voice over the Internet marks a significant change in the way large corporations will be doing business. It's as exciting a technological advance as the advent of the fax machine. ''We are well positioned to move into this new frontier. As we've demonstrated at recent Internet telephony shows, our voice quality has proved noticeably superior to our competition!'' The Tempest incorporates Franklin Telecom's own hardware technology, which includes a multiprocessor DSP card for voice compression and encoding. This technology has proved to offer the lowest delay across the IP network, significantly adding to the natural sound of the call. FNet's network will incorporate several unique features. For instance, the user can adjust the delivery volume of the call while the call is in progress by using the telephone keypad. FNet customers using their authorization codes can also ''anchor'' on the network. This allows any number of subsequent calls to be made without having to re-enter a PIN number or authorization code. The primary business of Franklin Telecom, founded in 1981, is the design and manufacturing of communications devices, high-speed LAN, WAN, telco and satellite systems and software. Franklin has an installed base of more than 100,000 nodes worldwide. Franklin's Internet subsidiaries, FNet and Internet Passport, provide services using FTEL products.

To: Mathon Dabasir who wrote (537)	1/9/1998 11:35:00 AM
From: John Klein	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 6846

QWST will certainly face limited competition in the wholesale fibersegment, but consider also that there is a glut of capacity right around the corner. Fiber capacity is a commodity, and unless QWST begins to offer a moree saleable product suite (and sell it), they will be hardly free from competition. If you're thinking a long-term telcom play, you are better off with WCOM. If fiber prices continue to drop (and they have nearly halved along the QWST routes in the last year due to competition from frontier and GTE, among others), then the value of having fiber in the ground diminishes considerably. It almost makes more sence to lease then dig, and who better to take advantage of those dynamics then WCOM/MCI, with the sale and marketing expertise that they have (their data products are hands-down the best in the industry, and their sales force is arguably the most refined and agressive);and all the local facilities they have aquired in the past couple of years. QWST is the worlds greatest facilites-based wholesale carrier. That is all. They are in the lower-third of the industry in all of their other product offerings. Paul