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Technology Stocks : Internet Search Engines - The New Conglomerates? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dwight Taylor who wrote (43)	4/21/1998 8:16:00 PM
From: Sowbug	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 165

As a former AMATI observer I am intrigued by your thoughts. Is xDSL technology ready for the market? Is it offered for homes wired with POTS? Dwight, By "former," I assume you gave up on the company? If so, why? I'm not an expert on xDSL (the ATHM thread has some fairly objective and knowledgable contributors), but I know the following: no agreed-upon standard yet (ergo the "x" in xDSL); very serious retrofitting issues (a little like how some old or oddly multiplexed phone lines won't handle the x2, kFlex, or V.90 standards at full speed); declining throughput as lines go farther from the telco's switch point (requiring more switching stations); and a feeling among some that it's a half-a*sed technology compared to cable modems (cable max theoretical throughput much higher than xDSL's, so why bother with xDSL)? But I understand that it works fine in areas where it's offered, and the big attraction to me is that it's always on and can run through the same two POTS wires as your phone. The beauty is that it runs at such a high frequency that it doesn't affect normal operation of your telephone, so you can be on the Net and take a call at the same time on a single phone line. Big picture: modems suck. In 10 years people will laugh at them, like rotary dial phones and 8-tracks. The replacement: some technology that lets us send/receive information at will, like a T1 or T3 line but in your own home. Smart question to ask: when "signing on" to the Net is as meaningless as "signing on" to television or "signing on" to household electricity, which of these Internet companies is going to be there providing you service?