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Technology Stocks : C-Cube -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: DiViT who wrote (27688)	1/7/1998 3:44:00 PM
From: BillyG	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 50808

And when a company restructures for financial reasons, it cuts costs other areas, such as the company-paid laser tag facility. The PhD's don't like this, and maybe they'll move North(West). he, he, he

To: DiViT who wrote (27688)	1/7/1998 3:52:00 PM
From: John Rieman	Respond to of 50808

Alex's frequent flyer miles might be lower in 1998. Phillips moves to Atlanta, and they want in the settop market................................. mediacentral.com Among Energized Philips' Goals: Dive Into U.S. Digital Set-Top Market By Jim Barthold Philips Broadband Networks Inc.'s new goal is to use all its worldwide resources to serve the U.S. cable industry from the headend to the home. The company, which will soon move its headquarters from the Netherlands to Atlanta, is taking aim on American cable systems. And that includes enlisting in the effort to develop digital set-top boxes. "We see any organization as a means to an end," says Chuck Kaplan, the VP-GM of Philips' new broadband communication line of business [LoB], which will be the corporate sister of the broadband cable, broadband wireless and satellite master antenna divisions. "You figure out what your objectives are as a company, then go back and figure out how you're going to structure in order to make it happen." Kaplan said Philips is a $41-billion company with businesses that touch consumer electronics from televisions to electric razors and light bulbs, as well as content from the likes of Polygram. Those resources, he added, should serve the company well as cable edges closer to the retail marketplace. "Philips will be a player in the set-top market," Kaplan promised. "The question is, and the answer does not exist: Will we jump in immediately with an OpenCable-style product or will we jump in with a DVB [digital video broadcast] product? Or will we wait a relatively short period and then make our entree in the retail business?" Whichever way the company moves, it will be done differently from the way it introduced Magnavox analog set-tops several years ago. That short-lived foray could taint the industry's perception of Philips as a box maker. "That's an example of a transport company trying to get into the set-top business," Kaplan conceded. "We won't be doing that again. We'll have set-top people getting into the set-top business." He noted that Philips has experience in the set-top business, thanks to satellite products in Europe, Asia and Latin America, which it will bring to the American market. "The question is not if. It's when does it make sense?" Kaplan said. "One of the great strengths that Philips has is a rather unique strength compared to the other suppliers in the U.S. market. Those other suppliers don't really have retail distribution. That's something that we can do, and we're going to use it." Philips is also going to use its traditional networking strengths to push such technologies as cable telephony, he noted, predicting that the first growth areas will probably be overseas where cable systems are just being built. "You [the operator] know there's a business for cable TV; you know there's a lot of consumer demand," Kaplan said. "Suppose you're not sure telephony's going to work. You know technically you can make it work, but you're not sure about the business model. What's the worst thing that happens to you? You're a cable operator. "The best thing that happens is you're running three services over one wire and you get lots of opportunity to make the business model work." When Kaplan talks about telephony, he's talking about traditional wireline services running through cable's hybrid fiber/coax [HFC] plant, not packetized information sent via Internet Protocol [IP]. "When I'm doing something special on the Internet that might include voice, that might be the end basis where there's an application that it makes sense to talk in conjunction with doing something else," he continued, placing IP telephony in a zone. "That may be taking the telephone business and cutting a horizontal niche in it." Kaplan said one thing is certain: What seems like cable's huge pipe of bandwidth will fill up as more services compete for space. "Yeah, it will all fill up, with services competing for limited resources," he said. "Fundamentally, we believe that where there's bandwidth, somebody is going to stick whatever services they can on those pipes and get whatever subscriber revenue they can." (January 5, 1998)