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Technology Stocks : Netscape -- Giant Killer or Flash in the Pan? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: ahhaha who wrote (1950)	1/14/1998 12:29:00 AM
From: Keith Hankin	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 4903

Just realize that PACBELL doesn't agree with DSL and they have gone out of their way to avoid being railroaded into another ISDN fiasco. Do you really believe this? Are you familiar with DSL technology? It does not have the pitfalls of ISDN, and any competent decision-making individual PacBell knows this. Moreover, PacBell <is> investing in DSL technology. It is available, although somewhat expensive right now. Intuitively, what makes more sense, electric signals over copper or light signals over fiber? Although I am no expert here, I believe that you improperly phrase the question. Both cable and DSL technology can be carried over fiber over most of the data's travel path. But the last mile to the home is where there is a difference. Although it is possible to have fiber-to-the-curb for cable, it is prohibitively expensive, and thus is not being used. Various approaches are being taken. But several problems exist, including the fact that most cable-to-the-home is built for broadcast-only support. This means that much of it needs replacing. It is mostly one-way (to the home only) and is using shared bandwidth, which degrades when several people want to use it simultaneously for different i/o. Moreover, the cable companies are extremely debt-laden, and thus are unable to afford a quick rollout of internet-capable technology. Moreover, cable internet access is not very unreliable, which might be fine for a consumer but is entirely unacceptable for corporate usage where downtime can be very expensive. I suggest you read up on the topic more before jumping to conclusions from a simple but meaningless analogy. Personally, I have learned a lot about this topic from other web sites in addition to other SI threads, particularly on Amati (AMTX), Aware (AWRE), and a few others.