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Microcap & Penny Stocks : FRANKLIN TELECOM (FTEL) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Judith who wrote (34130)	5/25/1998 2:33:00 PM
From: Martin P. Smith	Respond to of 41046

Judith, We can be co-located with WCOM AND work over a private Intranet (In fact that is EXACTLY what we are doing). Marketing focus as far as I am aware is to market FNET and DVGs to Corporations and international calling these will have priority over the individual comsumer (Great move I think). It is likely that other ISPs will provide the role of focussing marketing to the indiviual consumer in smaller target markets. They can then piggyback off of the FNET network to provide global reach. These ISPs will provide two income streams to FTEL the DVG sales and the 2c per minute or whatever FNET charge for piggybacking off the FNET network. Hope this helps. And I did not say it at the time but thanks for your report from Baltimore. Martin

To: Judith who wrote (34130)	5/25/1998 3:18:00 PM
From: topwright	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 41046

Judith, I feel your questions helped me to answer a few other points that I had pondered over recently. It is my understanding that FNET is going to do both, wholesale time, and market their own retail LD services. NewGen telcos, along with corporate enterprise systems will have a rough road ahead of them in gaining access to global infrastructures on their own. FNET's co-location agreement with Worldcom removes many of those barriers, allowing lesser entities to purchase bulk time from FNET, thus piggybacking access to FNET's global network. FNET will grow from both ends, towards the middle. On one end revenues will be produced from varied arrangements including reciprocal agreements, revenue sharing, transactional processing fees, etc., along with volume from bulk time sales. On the other end, FNET is focusing on immediate deployment of DVG's into high traffic/high profit overseas P.O.P.'s that will interface into a simultaneous build-out of high traffic domestically deployed DVG's. Thus creating an internal cash flow to help subsidize rapid expansion. The result should produce a financial strategy covering both ends of the spectrum, one being a low profit/high volume selling of bulk time, the other will be a high profit/low volume (to start) revenue stream created from the marketing of their own LD services at retail. With both sides also contributing revenue from subsequent services just like feeder streams into a larger river. Add to this the third piece in this triangular loop, Franklin. Although both companies will run independent of each other, there is set into place many vertically reciprocal arrangements that will lend to each others success. After talking to the new management of FNET, I quickly came to realize that they will do what ever it takes to build FNET into a world class NewGen telco. That means that if they deem it necessary to go outside of Franklin for certain equipment needs, so be it. Bottom line is that both companies will be able to play off each other in an open bi-lateral relationship. As for being susceptible to congestion, I think UUNET/MCI and others yet to be mentioned will offer more than enough capacity to bypass much of this congestion via routing schemes and utilizing new state of the art fiber optics. New technologies are coming on line that will address much of what that article refers to. Multiplexers, sonet rings, not to mention all the alternatives, adsl, xdsl, cable, satellite, rf, and incredible new fiber optics should more than compensate. Routing schemes incorporating the latest built-in smart systems to constantly be monitoring packet deliveries, analyzing, then automatically and seamlessly rerouting, will certainly alleviate much of those concerns. Technology is more than compensating up till now. For better than a year now we have been warned of the pending gridlock. Do you see it? No! And the reason is because more and more capacity is coming on line daily, and at the same time new technologies are also starting to gain momentum. Franklin's equipment is capable of being run over many platforms, so if there is problem (which I doubt) they can quickly convert to private frame relays or many other methods of delivery. As a matter of fact frame relay would be a viable alternative now except for the cost effeciencies. But as with anything, volume may bring prices down in the near future to make that a viable alternative or even a preferred method of delivery, especially at the corporate level. Who knows? All the above is just my spin, based on what I understand to be reasonable conclusions after talking to the company and my understanding of the industry as a whole. My suggestion is to talk to an engineer at Franklin or some other company and see what their take is. Raleigh