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Technology Stocks : Teligent -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Norm Franklin who wrote (86)	3/12/1998 1:02:00 PM
From: Steven Bowen	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 270

Norm, "Presumably they will be going head to head in several of these markets -- any idea of how many, especially in the early years, and whether one has an advantage over the other in these situations?" They will probably be going head to head in most every market. If I were to make a wild guess, I'd say most of the profit in this business is probably in the top 30 or so largest markets, and I'm sure they'll both be targeting these 30 as their first to enter. That said, I still don't look at WinStar and Teligent, or any other CLEC for that matter, as being in competition. The Baby Bells (and GTE) probably still control 98% of the local market these guys are after. And WinStar and Teligent can both do very well if they capture just a tiny few percent of this market. The competition is with the Baby Bells, and there is easily room for a few of these CLEC's in any market. "Also, what is the fundamental advantage of this technology over a simple fiber pipe to the backbone?" To most small businesses (or medium or large for that matter), there is no such thing as "a simple fiber pipe to the backbone". That is the fundamental advantage. Wireless can reach many customers that fiber never will (or only at very high costs of digging up the streets). Even to buildings that have fiber, wireless will be much cheaper (I believe on the order of 25%) due to the much lower costs of building out the network. "If I were a business contemplating ways of reducing my operating costs in this area, what does that picture look like?" I'm taking this to mean if you were a business and looking to reduce your telecom costs. Like I just said, I think WinStar is able to offer a complete bundled package of telecom services for I think 25% less than the current incumbant provider. Any wireless provider will be able to provide this same type of cost savings due the lower cost of building out their networks, ie there is no digging up the streets to lay fiber. Hope this helps, Steve