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Technology Stocks : COMS & the Ghost of USRX w/ other STUFF -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: jhild who wrote (12579)	2/9/1998 8:59:00 AM
From: Steve Parrino	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 22053

<Forgot to mention that it also had one of the first car air-conditioners on it. Houston was the test market.> We had one of those Oldsmobiles, too. Two big plastic tubes running from behind the back seat up to the roof where the air vents were located. We normally drove Chevys because Mom worked for them, but got the Olds because we were taking a family trip to California and wanted to try this new fangled air conditioning. I was a little kid, but I do remember people looking at us driving in the heat with the windows up and thinking we were crazy.

To: jhild who wrote (12579)	2/9/1998 9:34:00 AM
From: Moonray	Respond to of 22053

State Senate eyes high-speed Net access status Scripps-McClatchy Western Service SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- A promising brand of high-speed Internet access has Web addicts drooling and others wondering why it's taking so long to become available in California. On Tuesday, a Senate hearing will discuss the benefits of fast Internet service to all areas of the economy and explore ways to encourage its quick deployment. The hearing, sponsored by Sen. Steve Peace, D-El Cajon, will focus on the promise of ADSL (asynchronous digital subscriber line) technology, which can transmit data at up to 1.5 megabits per second -- 50 times faster than the speediest standard modem -- over regular telephone lines. But legislators also will hear from industry experts on the roadblocks that make the widespread use of ADSL unlikely until possibly the 21st century, said Randy Chinn, a consultant to Peace's Senate Committee on Energy, Utilities and Communications. On the one side, Chinn said, are high- tech companies and computer users salivating for the lightning-fast downloads that ADSL technology promises. On the other are the telephone companies, that, steeped in the culture of heavy regulation and facing some technological hurdles, have been slow to roll out ADSL. ''Once we get these two sides to the table, we'll see if there's any way to find some common ground and try to identify some barriers,'' Chinn said. While ADSL technology has been available for years, phone companies have been slow to implement it -- in part because they are accustomed to working in a regulated environment that doesn't encourage risk-taking, said Ted Jenkins, a vice president at Intel Corp. and chairman of the California Manufacturers Association. ''If we can find some regulatory bottlenecks that could be adjusted, then maybe someone could take a more aggressive approach to this,'' he said. But he also added that he wasn't in favor of loosening a lot of regulatory restraints without some assurance that the phone companies could provide ADSL connections at rates low enough to attract a mass audience. Pacific Bell agrees that the regulatory culture has been a factor. ''A heavily regulated market makes it more difficult to get cutting-edge services to the marketplace,'' said Eddie Reeves, a Pacific Bell spokesman. ''But are we comfortable with that being the case? The answer is no.'' Still, he said, the company is focused on getting ADSL to market as soon as it can. ''It's something we're committed to ... but in general, the technology is still in a very early stage of development, and the other thing we have to figure into this is market demand.'' If Jenkins is correct, market demand could be very large. In addition to regular Internet users tired of slow downloads of large Web pages, eager customers could include schools that would use the high speed connections for video- conferences between students and teachers, medical personnel who could ship patient records and X-rays to specialists, or law-enforcement agencies that could swap information more easily. ''I view this as infrastructure taking the place of other infrastructure,'' Jenkins said. ''Maybe using this for telecommuting will mean we can delay building an extra lane of freeway, cutting air pollution and accelerating productivity.'' o~~~ O