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Technology Stocks : Ciena (CIEN) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: craig crawford who wrote (1156)	1/27/1998 6:48:00 PM
From: nghi vu	Respond to of 12623

I am in I sold out of AFCI this morning and park my money in CIEN at 50.5.

To: craig crawford who wrote (1156)	1/29/1998 7:08:00 AM
From: Larry Unger	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 12623

News Alert from Reuters via Quote.com Topic: (NASDAQ:MCIC) Mci Communications Corp, (NYSE:T) At&T Corp, Quote.com News Item #5218397 Headline: INTERVIEW - MCI (NASDAQ:MCIC) to add to local investments ====================================================================== By Jessica Hall NEW YORK, Jan 28 (Reuters) - MCI Communications Corp will continue to invest in the local telephone market and plans to spend about $600 million to strengthen its local facilities in 1998, said Ray Allieri, MCI's senior vice president of local services. MCI, the nation's second-largest long distance company, has already spent about $2 billion to build its own local telephone facilities in 31 markets. The company declined to comment on when it will break even on those investments. MCI may divert the new spending into expanding the capacity of its existing markets before adding any new markets, Allieri said in a telephone interview. "We'll look at our expected volumes in existing markets....what we haven't finalized is what, if any, new markets we might add," Allieri said. Last week, MCI said it would focus its local market efforts on its own facilities instead of reselling service from the Baby Bells. MCI contends that under the current regulatory environment, it is not economical to resell local phone service since the fees it must pay the Baby Bells are often close to or greater than the prices retail customers pay for the service. MCI's rival AT&T Corp (NYSE:T) also recently said it would halt its efforts to resell local phone service. Analysts estimate AT&T lost an estimated $1.50 to $2 a month for each subscriber it added. MCI also lost money in resale. "We haven't talked about the specific numbers, but we would agree that we were losing money on every customer that we sold," Allieri said. MCI said it is "frustrated" by the lack of competition that has developed since the passage of the 1996 Telecommunications Act. Since the Act's passage there has been much debate and finger-pointing, but limited new competition. A key provision of the Telecom Act has also been ruled unconstitutional, but that ruling is expected to be quickly appealed. The long distance companies contend that the Baby Bells have not opened their markets to competition. The Bell companies have said their markets are open but the long distance companies are not anxious to get into the local phone market. Until the local market is fully open to competition, MCI said it will continue to focus on facilities-based services. "There's only a certain appetite among our shareholders for us to able to absorb losses. ... We're about at the end of our capacity to increase those losses unless we saw that there was more light at the end of the tunnel and a shorter time to recover those losses," Allieri said. Copyright 1998, Reuters News Service