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Technology Stocks : Winstar Comm. (WCII) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jason Cogan who wrote (5454)	4/26/1998
From: Steven Bowen	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 12468

Jason, I think you're just trying to be argumentative and not realistic. "If the average communications bill was $20/month on average,..." $20 a month, give me a break. WinStar is targeting small, medium, and now large companies. They can offer local, long distance, paging, faxing, high speed internet, video services (TV, conferencing,...), content, etc, etc, etc. I would say in ten years their average line will generate closer to $200 rather than $20. Using your numbers, rather than 1/6, now they only need about 1.5% of the work force to generate that $5 billion. Obviously not a guarantee, but I think very possible. "Cable modems promise direct delivery of content, with significantly increased speeds." How many office buildings do you know that are currently wired for cable? To get cable to that building will take months and $100,000. To get 38GHz to that building will take two weeks and costs $4000. Who's gonna win? "...entrench the dominant position of fiber." I keep trying to tell you, where WinStar is going there is no fiber and probably never will be!!! Who will supply these people with broadband communications? Satelite? xDSL? I bet wireless. "Winstar is on the verge of bankruptcy, and owes close to 1 billion dollars in earnings to bondholers before stockholders will ever see a penny." That's a stupid comment. WinStar is no where close to bankruptcy. And I don't know what the heck you're talking about, but I as a stockholder has probably already seen about $50 per share profit just in the last year. What do you mean, I'll never see a penny. Do you think a company can't have dept, but yet be profitable? Do you think a company can't have debt and pay a dividend? Again, I think you just want to argue. Steve

To: Jason Cogan who wrote (5454)	4/26/1998 3:20:00 PM
From: David P. Stark	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 12468

Jason and all : I have been an investor in Winstar for many years, I would guess, longer then most people on this thread. I bought all of my shares between six and nine dollars. I have been following this thread since maybe post #500 and have read everyone. There are many knowledgeable people here and I am still bullish on Winstar's future even though I am not an enginnere, an accountant, or work in the telecommunications field. I am an investor pure and simple, it is how I make my living. That having been said, I for one, appricate your questions, concerns, and views as to Winstars realative value and future. I must say that I have been a little disapointed with some of the answers and responses that you have gotten. I hope that you con- tinue asking the hard questions that should be asked and answered about any investment. And, if the answeres don't add up or are sus- pect then maybe it is time to move on. For now, I will continue to hold this investment, but I also know that there are many fish in the sea and that just saying that "Bill R. won't let it happen", does not mean that it won't happen. Good Luck to All, and keep an open mind. David P. Stark

To: Jason Cogan who wrote (5454)	4/26/1998 5:46:00 PM
From: Bernard Levy	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 12468

Hi Jason: I hate to tell you that, but you are grossly misinformed regarding broadband wireless and all competing broadband local access technologies. LOS wireless technology such as used by WCII relies on roof antennas and is about 99.99% reliable (see WCII's announcement on its point to multipoint test of Nortel equipment in DC). As for the wide availability of bandwidth, as far as wireless is concerned, to ensure small roof antennas, one needs to use frequencies beyond 20GHz. The choices are TGNT (400MHz of spectrum at 24GHz), LMDS operators (1.3GHz at 28Ghz-- note that WCII has actually some of those licences, including the one for the entire San Francisco area), and 38Ghz. The FCC may auction in the future some additional bandwidth in the 39Ghz band. Satellite operators will have also some bandwidth in the Ka band. Thus, WCII does not have a monopoly, but it has the largest bandwidth holdings (more than 700MHz in all top 50 markets) of all broadband wireless service providers, as well as a 2 years lead over the competition. Broadband wireless technology is unbelievably cheap to deploy: point to multipoint allows the deployment of T1-line equivalent at the cost of $200 per line. Current T1 costs a few thousand dollars, and ADSL will cost easily $1K per line. Your estimate of $20 per line is a joke-- the cost of an ordinary phone line (no data) for businesses varies between $60 and $100. For data, the cost is way higher: a T1 line costs $1K, an ISDN line (including phone charges) costs about $125 a month, and the recent rates published by GTE and US West for ADSL will be a few $100's per month (you can always trust the RBOCS for shooting themselves in the foot). Fiber is totally uneconomical except for very large buildings. The cost of trenching is astronomical. As an example, our Campus (also in the UC system, since I note you are a student at the UCLA business school) spent $25M to connect all its buildings with fiber. Most of the cost was trenching and passing the fiber. Also, you keep harping on Vogel's numbers, but all other analysts (Jack Grubman, Frank Governali) have almost identical numbers. Even the most bearish of analysts following WCII, Jack Reagan, views it as a short term hold, but is very bullish long term. Personally, I do not care if you are long or short WCII. Like most others on this thread, I have spent inordinate amounts of time researching all the technological and economic aspects of broadband wireless, and I am very comfortable with WCII's long term prospects. To make a valid analysis of WCII, I would recommend that you should examine Teleport's early years, the cable companies in the 70's,or MCI and Sprint in the 80's. All of these companies were massively in the red during their early years, yet provided superb returns for their investors over the long run. Best wishes, Bernard Levy