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

To: Pat Hughes who wrote (46107)	5/5/1998 11:24:00 PM
From: Peter Yang	Respond to of 61433

Insider Sales between Feb-April, 1998 $$$ #Shares #Insiders $Price Date 26,693,842 654,412 12 40.79 4/98 2,834,284 77,181 4 36.72 3/98 17,817,348 534,151 12 33.36 2/98 11,380,926 328,334 6 34.66 3/98 1,039,791 34,998 1 29.71 2/98 Total shares sold by Insiders: 1,629,076 If there is more good news to come for ASND, why so many insiders sold?

To: Pat Hughes who wrote (46107)	5/5/1998 11:24:00 PM
From: Bindusagar Reddy	Respond to of 61433

I just listened to conf. call from CSCO. They admit that they are weak in Core switching, they are not concentrating. They think optical network will be the main focus for future. They also admit that they are weak in network management. Openly admitted ATT fiasco is their fault. It appears like they are loosing focus on imp. carrier market. Anyone has thoughts on this.

To: Pat Hughes who wrote (46107)	5/6/1998 2:58:00 AM
From: djane	Respond to of 61433

Ascend adds new voice to convergence [Partnership with eFusion] [Nice article] By Laura Kujubu and Stephen Lawson InfoWorld Electric Posted at 7:10 AM PT, May 4, 1998 infoworld.com Remote-access powerhouse Ascend Communications this week will give a major boost to the trend for voice-data integration through a new partnership with eFusion. The company will make the announcement at the NetWorld+Interop exhibition in Las Vegas. Using eFusion's technology, Ascend will offer service providers the ability to let their customers browse the Web and make voice calls simultaneously. The technology is expected to provide a boost to Internet commerce and also allow new features for call centers and technical help desks, observers said. Ascend is planning to offer the eFusion software as optional features on its recently announced Max Voice Gateway devices, and at least one ISP was enthused about the combined products' possibilities. The ISP is currently using Lucent Technologies' PortMaster, but, "if, in fact, there is consumer demand for this, we may have to look at Ascend hardware again," said Rich White, chief technology officer at Best Internet Communications, in Mountain View, Calif. Analysts agreed such a technology could provide a boost for applications including I-commerce. "One of the biggest problems with buying from the Web now is that there's no human interaction," said Deb Mielke, an analyst at TeleChoice, in Verona, N.J. Ascend, a dominant provider of ISP networks, stands to remove that limitation, she said. Although the ubiquity of the Web browser has opened up a powerful new set of tools for users to communicate with enterprises, customers, and mobile workers, most users equipped with only one phone line have not been able to use the Internet and a telephone at the same time. The eFusion applications are designed to let end-users initiate a voice call through a browser and to make and receive calls without interruption while using the Internet. Ascend initially will resell three applications to run on its gateways: Internet Call Waiting alerts Internet users to incoming calls and lets them answer or forward the call without leaving the Internet session. Call-completion software can automatically send incoming calls to the user's network-based voice mail inbox, or calls can be captured by the eFusion system for later online retrieval. Push-to-Talk lets users click a button on a Web page to automatically initiate a voice call through any PC equipped with a microphone and speakers. While the call is in progress, users' browsers can be synchronized so the technician or salesperson can direct the remote user around a site, officials said. The software will direct voice and data traffic from the Ascend gateway, usually deployed at an ISP's point of presence. The gateway can drop voice traffic onto the public switched telephone network or send it directly across a private IP infrastructure or the Internet, officials said. The software in the first phase of the partnership will be available in the second half of this year, they added. Francois de Repentigny, an analyst at Frost & Sullivan, in Mountain View, Calif., applauded the partnership and the integration of two already-solid products. "This is one of the first true real-world [IP telephony offerings]," de Repentigny said. Ascend Communications Inc., in Alameda, Calif., is at ascend.com. eFusion Inc., in Beaverton, Ore., is at efusion.com. Laura Kujubu is a reporter for InfoWorld and Stephen Lawson is a senior writer. Go to the Week's Top News Stories Please direct your comments to InfoWorld Boston Bureau Chief, Ted Smalley Bowen Copyright c 1998 InfoWorld Media Group Inc. InfoWorld Electric is a member of IDG.net \| SiteMap \| Search \| PageOne \| Conferences \| Reader/Ad Services \| \| Enterprise Careers \| Opinions \| Test Center \| Features \| \| Forums \| Interviews \| InfoWorld Print \| InfoQuote \|

To: Pat Hughes who wrote (46107)	5/6/1998 3:02:00 AM
From: djane	Respond to of 61433

3/16/98 Metcalfe article in InfoWorld on eFusion (INTC spin-off) eFusion lets you use a single telephone line to view a Web page and talk on the phone infoworld.com For 122 years we've been growing the telephone network. For 29 years we've been growing the Internet. And it's still not clear how long it will take to incorporate the circuit switching of telephones into the packet switching of the Internet. Many companies are introducing products that combine the telephone and Internet networks. One such is eFusion, an Intel spin-off in Beaverton, Ore. Ajit Pendse is CEO of eFusion. He has held various positions at Intel, including director of strategic partnerships. He developed alliances with telephone local exchange carriers (LECs) during Intel's ill-fated ProShare initiative. ProShare was supposed to provide personal computer video and data conferencing over ISDN. However, after years of working with the clueless LECs on deploying ISDN and spending hundreds of millions of dollars, Intel was forced to admit that ISDN wouldn't make it. Andy Grove sadly admitted we're stuck with dial-up telephone modems for the foreseeable future. So Intel spun off much of ProShare. Parts became Microsoft NetMeeting, now "integrated" into Windows. Other parts got spun off as eFusion along with Pendse and some Intel cash. eFusion makes telephone-Internet gateways for sale to Internet service providers and corporate call centers. These gateways fuse the Web and the telephone network using a conferencing standard called H.323. Say you've dialed your PC in to an ISP and are shopping on the Web. You find an interesting product. In browsing for information about the product, you reach a point where you'd like to talk to somebody knowledgeable about it. So you click on eFusion's Push-to-Talk button. Soon you are talking via your Internet-connected PC to an agent in the call center of the company selling the product. What's more, the agent is automatically looking at the same page on the Web that you are, and he can move with you through subsequent Web pages. You're still dialed in to your ISP. Your voice is carried through the Internet using H.323 inside IP packets intermixed with IP packets carrying Web downloads. An eFusion gateway carries your voice between the telephone network connected to the company's call center and your Internet-connected PC. For a demonstration of eFusion's Push-to-Talk, take your Internet browser -- Microsoft or Netscape -- go to efusion.com. You will need a multimedia Pentium PC running Windows 95 and H.323 Internet phone software -- for example Microsoft's NetMeeting or Intel's Internet Video Phone. The demo requires a free one-time download of eFusion's Internet Call Assistant helper application. When I tried it, the agent's voice was clear, and eFusion's linkage to Web pages was effective in expediting my Web transactions. Let me know how your demo goes. Now, it can vary where Internet voice packets are converted into telephone conversations. The selling company can have an eFusion gateway on premises connected directly to its Web and call-center servers. Or, the gateway can be at the ISP of the selling company. Or, the gateway can be at your ISP. Of course, today's Internet isn't all that good at carrying telephone calls, especially during rush hours. And so eFusion offers another mode of fusing Web and voice. If telephone quality degrades, your PC can hang up its ISP connection into the Internet and call the selling company directly over the telephone network. The continued H.323 conversation between your PC and the selling company is still carried over IP. It's just that the IP is carried over a private telephone line with fixed bandwidth and delay, so the voice will be of business quality. Another feature offered by eFusion is Internet Call Waiting. When using your only telephone line for Internet access, someone making a phone call to you ordinarily gets a busy signal. Now, if your ISP has an eFusion gateway, a dialog box can appear on your PC browser screen announcing an incoming phone call. You then decide whether to take the waiting call through your PC over your Internet connection. Pendse is so impressive I've invited him to speak at Vortex98, my new telephone-Internet convergence conference, May 20 to May 22. For more information see vortex98.com. And oh, by the way, at Vortex98 we'll be celebrating the first 25 years of Ethernet. Technology pundit Bob Metcalfe invented Ethernet in 1973 and founded 3Com in 1979, and today he specializes in the Internet. Send e-mail to Metcalfe@infoworld.com. Missed a column? Go back for more. Copyright c 1998 InfoWorld Media Group Inc. \| SiteMap \|Search \| PageOne \| Conferences \| Reader/Ad Services \| \| Enterprise Careers \| Opinions \| Test Center \| Features \| \| Forums \| Interviews \| InfoWorld Print \| InfoQuote \|