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

To: Doug (Htfd,CT) who wrote (1212)	2/12/1998 6:30:00 PM
From: Randy Ellingson	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 12623

"Don't ask me to post more. The copyrighted 8-page Gilder Technology Report costs me a couple hundred bucks to get in the mail. Gotta have some secrets... Doug (no position in CIEN, Nortel or LU)" So if anything, the report is saving you money rather than making you money. Presumably if there were a clear leader/winner argued in the report, you'd at least want to try to cover your costs...

To: Doug (Htfd,CT) who wrote (1212)	2/12/1998 11:03:00 PM
From: Tim Bagwell	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 12623

Thanks for the info Doug, In response to the Gilder article I would say that I have mixed feelings. I agree that Ciena has displayed a tendency to be in a "wait & see" mode where little work is ongoing toward future systems. On the other hand, I believe they are very busy meeting the current demand. The question then becomes, how far will the present technologies take WDM and when will Internet traffic growth demand further advances in technology? I know that Gilder is a proponent of the so called "all optical network" and Ciena may not be pursuing this area as much as resource rich companies like Lucent or Nortel. But you have to ask yourself when the next push will hit the backbone networks? The best present technology will eventually get us to perhaps 40-80 channels at 10 Gb/s for as much as 800 Gb/s of bandwidth on a single fiber. Most networks have many parallel fibers. This is a staggering increase above what is presently a slow but ok situation. I'm left to expect that the present upgrades to the backbone will be sufficient for the next decade. To be sure, service providers will not be able to change their networks at any faster rate than this. It's just too huge of a capital expense and the software management issues are as yet unknown. So, if the present technology will get us through the next decade, it's reasonable to assume that Ciena could have a bright future for at least that long. The "all optical network" is a nice concept that the Gilder's of the world like to dream about but at this point in time it's science fiction IMHO. Now breakthroughs can and will happen but they are unpredictable. Meanwhile, Ciena just turns the crank day and night.

To: Doug (Htfd,CT) who wrote (1212)	2/20/1998 11:39:00 AM
From: Sam Citron	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 12623

Doug, RE: Gilder de-listing I was surprised to see that George has de-listed Ciena. I do not recall any other companies that George has de-listed in the past. Pretty strong sell recommendation, I would say. Like I said early last year both here and on the Fiberspace thread, it will not be easy to compete with Lucent. It's not particularly difficult to get an early lead in an emerging technology, but to sustain such a lead against much larger competitors is difficult, unless your competitors are disadvantaged in some fundamental way by the technology shift, so as to make them less willing to commit to the new market. Perhaps it is merely a coincidence that Ciena has lost over 20% of its market value today, but I smell a change in the trend for Ciena. SC