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Technology Stocks : (LVLT) - Level 3 Communications -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: C W. Smith who wrote (532)	3/26/1998 1:03:00 AM
From: zebraspot	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 3873

On the future of IP (vs. "safer" investments, like telephone companies): >>Booming Internet to jolt telephone companies By Neil Winton, Science and Technology Correspondent LONDON, March 26 (Reuters) - The explosive growth of the Internet poses a life-or-death challenge to telephone companies, according to a report published on Thursday. The report, from Cambridge, England-based consultancy Analysys, said the Internet, the worldwide network of personal computers connected by telephone lines, threatens a cull of phone companies which fail to meet the demands of the new technology. Telephone companies which embrace the Internet challenge will thrive. According to Margaret Hopkins, principal consultant at Analysys and one of the report's authors, companies like Telecom Finland (TCFN.CN), and WorldCom Inc (WCOM - news) are front-runners in this race. Telephone companies only recently freed from state-ownership shackles are likely to be the hindmost. The Internet is set to shake-up the business world because the electronic commerce it generates melts traditional boundaries. Supermarkets can offer banking services, banks sell life insurance, and companies like software giant Microsoft Corp (MSFT - news) find themselves involved with companies offering products as disparate as news, entertainment and shopping. Analysys said that by the end of 1997, more than 60 million people around the world and nearly 20 million computers were linked over the Internet. This is growing at about 50 percent a year. ''The Internet creates chaos because it opens the door to new ways of doing things. When the dust settles, lasting competitive advantage will lie with the companies that have managed to find a new way of doing business,'' the report said. ''Telecommunications companies must fundamentally re-invent themselves if they are to exploit the huge commercial potential of the Internet,'' Analysys said. ''Operators need to abandon old prejudices as well as learn new skills, and drag themselves out of the dark ages of the public switched telephone network and into the Internet age,'' Hopkins told Reuters in a telephone interview. Internet use threatens to transform traditional telephony as voice traffic is overwhelmed by data transmission. Imaginative new companies are already using the Internet to sell long-distance calls for the price of a local call, undermining traditional fat profit margins. ''By 2003, over 25 percent of international call minutes are forecast to be carried over the Internet, by which time the IP (Internet provider) telephony market will be worth at least $7 billion. No doubt this explains why we are starting to see AT&T (Corp (T - news)), Deutsche Telekom (AG (DTEG.F)), GTE (Corp (GTE - news)) and MCI (Communications Corp (MCIC - news)) entering the IP telephony market,'' Hopkins said.<<