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

To: Dennis R. Duke who wrote (39116)	3/13/1998 9:16:00 PM
From: pat mudge	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 61433

Did you make the breakout session? Anything else there. The Q&A was conducted in the same room at the close of the presentation. There were about 2 questions and that was it. From my notes: Drivers: growth of Internet. AOL 300% year to year. Usage up from av. of 14 min. to 40 min. ISPs are maturing. Bandwidth demand continuing to drive need for solutions that scale. MCI slowed orders last Q (afterwards Ashby said there were was still MCI business), CLECs emerging in local loop. ATM in the backbone --- it scales. IP/SONET will still exist in places, but will be smaller market. Future --- increased density and higher performance. New technology: voice and fax over IP and Frame. ATM to Sonet. SS7 signalling. CLECS are leading adaptation to new technology. All top ten ISPs are Ascend customers. Macro issues: Asia/Pacific. Japan was 22% of business in '96 and only 5% in 4Q '97. Goood news: it can't drop any further. Will se growth in 2H. DSL is taking off. BA announced plans recently. Core systems: ATM. We sell families of products, not just single switches. BA had 100% growth in frame; PacBell had 400%. International is lagging, but catching up. Sahara broadband product in trial. Relaunched GRF, problems solved. Management priorities: * Product reliability and quality * Employee retention (was problem with Cascade merger) Now 1% mo. * Organizational infrastructure * Product leadership * Market development and expansion * Execution of business plan Expect to meet Q1 and regain credibility we lost in '97. Bernie: Voice Grade Equipment --- * must have intelligent links to all other networks. * SS7 * Common OSS interfaces QoS is important. Provides revenue basis for service providers. Navis: service delivery and management now a strength. Security is key and needs to be integrated into network. QoS, network security, and network management --- all to carrier specifications. ASND advantages: * Time to market * Best of breed in routing, switching, and access concentrators. * Penetration of key customers worldwide. * Focus on Public Data Network. Strong position in carrier market. Focus on New Public Network. Even if there are pricing pressures, margins will stay level. Seemed adamant on this point. DSP chips as enabling technology? Key is cost of processing power. Whether you use larger DSPs or smaller DSPs, key is processing power. What are you doing in SS7? "No announcement now. Effort is under way."

To: Dennis R. Duke who wrote (39116)	3/14/1998 11:31:00 AM
From: Dennis R. Duke	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 61433

O.K. Fan out people. Pat you cover cover JP Morgan, Buck you cover Internet World. Now report back here on Friday, or Saturday. Now let's go get that information. This is Buck's report as stolen from Yahoo: Spring Internet Worldbucky89 Mar 14 1998 3:31AM EST Hi Everyone! Just got back from spending a few days in LA at the Spring Internet World. Just thought I'd share some of my notes. Hey, ASND down today--what's the deal??? I was surprised Ascend did not have a booth at the show. I wonder why. IP Telephony and Virtual Private Networks were the big themes I saw everywhere at the show. Both of these new applications are going to accelerate the explosion in bandwidth demand. Beginning this year, IP Telephony will cause some awesome changes in the competitive environment and give CLEC's and ISP's a huge boost, since they don't have any cash cows to worry about killing. TDM circuit switching (today's phone technology) will be obsolete by 2003. VPN's will begin to replace leased lines, killing another cash cow for the IXC's. The competitive landscape is going to really change now, and it will be pretty confusing for the next few years. People like QWEST, Level 3, and Williams are pouring $$Billions into brand new fiber networks. Bandwidth demand will always be greater than supply, resulting in the need for "smart bandwidth" which can prioritize traffic and offer quality of service. I got to sit in an an excellent presentation by Michael Gaddis from Savvis Communications, a new backbone provider. He is one of the original inventors of ATM technology. His firm has their ATM backbone 100% built out by Ascend CBX500 ATM switches (and they're also using the GRF400!!), and he is taking full advantage of the smart switching capabilities of that switch. I can see now why AT&T is doing the same thing. Savvis' network was measured by some publication for having the lowest ave latency and jitter variance of any national service provider. Gaddis says this is because of his use of smart switching technology and flattened architecture. Gaddis says Ascend, Cisco, and most other ATM companies are working on improving the intelligence of their ATM switches to provide QoS provisioned on a per-PVC basis. This seems to be the only proven effective way of provisioning QoS for new applications such as VPN, Voice over IP, and eventually multimedia. Gaddis believes smart ATM (such as what is being provided by CBX500) will be the foundation upon which QoS will be provisioned by all providers. Buck Seriously, I love it when the internet provides us the power of many eyes and ears to watch our collective investments. It is a powerful tool! Thank you to both Buck and Pat, Dennis ÿ