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Technology Stocks : Aware, Inc. - Hot or cold IPO? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: emichael who wrote (2357)	1/20/1998 10:16:00 AM
From: Norman Klein	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 9236

There will be no buyout Why would the investors of Aware want to sell out to somebody else?? What kind of sense does that make?? There have substantial cash reserves and no problem finding people willing to invest in them. They have no compelling financial problems and the sky is literally (at least for right now) the limit in terms of potential growth. Why hand the golden goose over to someone else?? As an investor, a buyout would be the worse thing that could happen. Also their independence works to their advantage because companies don't have to worrry about buying from a large competitor.

To: emichael who wrote (2357)	1/20/1998 10:22:00 AM
From: OmertaSoldier	Respond to of 9236

Is this what all the buzz is about!! AWARE is mentioned at the very bottom. Nation/World - Stories from the latest print edition PC-PHONE ALLIANCE MAY SPEED UP WEB COMPUTER GIANTS AND 4 BABY BELLS WORKING ON TECHNICAL STANDARDS TO IMPROVE By New York Times News Service Web-posted Tuesday, January 20, 1998; 6:27 a.m. CST Three titans of the personal computer industry have joined with most of the nation's largest local telephone companies to enable consumers to receive Internet data over regular telephone lines at speeds much higher than are currently possible, according to executives involved with the alliance. Compaq Computer Corp., Intel Corp. and Microsoft Corp. intend to announce the venture next week at a communications conference in Washington, the executives said. The formation of the group is one of the most significant moves in what promises to be a yearslong battle between telephone companies and cable-television companies for control over how consumers get high-speed access to the Internet. The executives said the three companies, which set much of the agenda in the computer industry, have teamed with GTE Corp. and with four of the five Baby Bell telephone companies, including Ameritech, to set technical standards for the next generation of access to cyberspace. The group wants to have modems and software based on the standards on store shelves by Christmas, the executives said. If the group succeeds in popularizing the technology, consumers could get data such as World Wide Web pages from the Internet and other advanced services at speeds up to 30 times faster than today's fastest modems. Pages that take minutes to view would appear on a computer's screen almost instantly. The products envisioned by the consortium would essentially be new modems either installed in a computer or sitting next to one. Most important, perhaps, they would plug into normal telephone lines but would remain connected to the outside world at all times without the need to dial a service and without interfering with normal voice conversations over the same line. Such lightning-quick access to cyberspace has traditionally been possible only in offices or over cable modems, which are available in few parts of the U.S. Giving home users such a fast on-ramp to the information superhighway could open the door to new sorts of services, including video over the Internet that approaches television quality. "Once you get this stuff, you will sell your first-born before you go back to a normal modem," said Howard Anderson, managing director of the Yankee Group, a technology consulting firm in Boston. The technology embraced by the consortium, known as digital subscriber line, or DSL, has been under development in the telecommunications industry for years but has been held back by a lack of agreement on technical standards. Bell Atlantic Corp., which serves local telephone customers from Virginia to Maine, is the one regional Bell that has shied away from the Compaq-Intel-Microsoft consortium. People close to the talks between the company and the consortium said Bell Atlantic was leaning toward a different sort of DSL. While the company has left the door open to join the group, it also has reservations about how the consortium is run. The consortium is strongly influenced by its founding partners, said executives who have dealt with it. Compaq is the world's largest maker of personal computers. Intel is the largest maker of the microprocessors, the brains of personal computers. Microsoft is the largest maker of operating systems, the software that acts as the central nervous system of personal computers. As computer users have become more sophisticated and as the Internet has become loaded with data-heavy graphics, traditional modems, the devices that enable computers to communicate over telephone lines, have not kept pace. The result is often long on-line delays. The cable-television industry is pinning some of its hopes for growth on cable modems, which allow users to access the Internet using the cable network. Only about 100,000 people have signed up for cable modems, according to analysts, and the service is available to only about 10 percent of the nation's homes. People with a need for on-line speed often can order high-speed data lines from their local telephone company. But many of those options, such as the lines known as ISDN connections, can be cumbersome and expensive. Microsoft has been particularly expert at playing on each side of the cable-telephone fence. Last year, it invested $1 billion in Comcast Corp., the No. 4 cable company and a part owner of At Home, a new company that provides Internet access over cable lines. For many years, engineers and programmers believed the copper wires that carry voice conversations could not compete with dedicated data networks in their ability to carry large amounts of digital information. In recent years, advances in electrical engineering have challenged that assumption. Some engineers think standard copper telephone wires can carry as many as 8 million bits of information a second, though the consortium is initially developing standards for modems that can carry 1.5 million bits a second. Today's fastest standard modems are rated at 56,000 bits a second but are actually limited to 52,000. There are dozens of companies developing DSL products, but few follow the same standards. The Compaq-Intel-Microsoft consortium is relying in part on technology developed by a small Massachusetts company called Aware Inc. Several local telephone companies have deployed DSL in limited areas around the country.