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Technology Stocks : Ascend Communications (ASND) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Perry who wrote (36112)	2/24/1998 11:49:00 AM
From: hitesh puri	Respond to of 61433

The kicker to Cisco's announcement comes at the end. $515 per port !?? Last year the price/port plunged from 500+ to about just under 300 and is heading under $250/port. What will motivate carriers to throw away Ascend or USR equipment and go for this double priced AS5800 is to be seen. Also Cisco very cleverly states that a "system comprising of tying the 5200, 5300 along with the 5800 potentially yields 10,000 connections." How big will that system be in terms of floor or shelf space is unclear (also found out that you also need a 7200 router within that system !). You can have a number of Max TNTs doing the same thing. The USR Total Control Hub is hot swappable so down time there is minimal. Cisco more than anything or anyone else is a sales and marketing gorilla. I am not saying that does not mean anything. It does wonders for the shareholders but at the same time their products are not the best, its just that they can push them better. This is a fact that works in enterprise sales environment not carriers on whom such charm is lost as they focus on the product and will rigorously test and qualify it on their own. On that note Ascend's products (TNT, GX550, CBX500) have recently received high marks from GTE, Bell Atlantic, MCI. A lesser know fact for last year is that Ascend lost quite a few sales people and Cisco capitalized on that with their "Golden Dagger Program". That may be waning now. -hitesh