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To: Andrew Vance who wrote (14296)	6/4/1998 8:12:00 PM
From: Andrew Vance	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 17305

AV--Hectic day today since the kids had a half day of school and are out for the Summer. HELP, HELP, HELP and pass the PROSAC. They are driving me crazy.<GGG> Summer started with my daughter walking into the house in tears, bawling her eyes out. I quickly jumped up, thinking something terrible had happened (assaulted or beaten up, bleeding profusely, limb dangling, etc.) only to find out that she was in tears because she was accepted to another elementary school in the neighborhood. We discussed that even if she were accepted she was not really committed to going. Funny thing was she was originally shedding tears over the fact they had put her on a waiting list a few months ago. Go figure the mind of an 11 year old girl.<GG> Anyway, since it was a crazy rainy day filled with mortal distress, I used the time to make the world better for my daughter and to clean up some loose ends on the computer system. The fax-modem, scanning software, FAX software and screen capture programs were all successfully loaded under WinNT 4.0 with the updated and properly functioning drivers. The OCR program is great and had very view mistakes. To that end, the following local newspaper article is present on the SPRINT subject. To me, since they will roll it out in Denver, it is a direct response to the ADSL roll out of US West that started a few days ago. What I find very interesting is that this seems to be a "Complementary" installation to service those customers that do not have a continuous twisted copper pair through their entire circuit. It seems the Sprint system will cost money to install some infrastructure and will work over fiber optic cabling. I think we need to closely examine each of these roll outs. My ADSL solution is geared towards those customers that have copper phone lines from the local office to their homes with no non copper segments. This implementation will work real well in some of the largest and oldest markets in the country but will not be of much use where aluminum or fiber is interjected along the path. It also seems that the SPrint solution may require the fiber optic pathway. Bottom line, I think that multiple solutions will be implemented based on the material pathway of your telecommunications services. Sprint has big plans for phone lines ION proposal would -allow simultaneous use of voice, fax and lnternet service NEW YORK--Sprint Corp., the No. 3 U.S. long-distance company, unveiled a phone network that lets people simultaneously make calls, get faxes and hook to the Internet at high speeds through a conventional phone line. The new system, developed at a cost of more than $2 billion during five years, can deliver a typical voice call about 70 percent less expensively than existing networks, Sprint said. It also can provide video and conference calls that are cheaper than a traditional long-distance call. Sprint officials said they expect to roll out the product starting early-next year in areas including Denver, first to business customers and then to residential customers. Sprint is betting that the net work will boost its share of the mushrooming market for Internet traffic and appeal to customers who require a range of phone services. Still, the company faces hurdles from regulatory scrutiny to negotiating with regional Bell spinoffs to use their local phone lines and persuading businesses to accept a radically new billing method. "Selling that thing is going to be a beast," said Daniel Zito, an analyst at Legg Mason Wood Walker Inc. "There's a long education process and that leads to long sales cycles." Sprint's move comes as phone companies race to offer faster data and Internet hookups. Customers of the new system can access the global computer network as much as 100 times quicker than through a typical 56 kilobit a second modem, Sprint said. Customers are expected to pay about $200 for the equipment needed to link their phone lines to the new network, called Integrated On-Demand Network. Sprint executives said they're still determining how much to charge for ION service, which is aimed at business customers and the 16 million U.S. households that spend more than $110 a month on telephone service. Billing will be based on how much bandwidth, or data-transmitting capacity, customers use, not the distance of a call. Sprint will spend at least $400 million a year during the next two years buying equipment and developing software to run the new system, Sprint President Ronald LeMay said at a news conference. LeMay and other Sprint executives said they don't foresee regulatory problems in offering ION, which blurs the lines between local and long-distance service as well between voice and data communications. The company can offer it immediately to businesses that are linked to fiber-optic networks in major cities and can deliver service to residential customers over cable-television modems or wireless networks if the regional Bell spinoffs balk, said William Esrey, Sprint chairman and chief executive. "I don't think the Bell companies are going to be prepared to stand in the way of this," Esrey said. Yet rivals already are raising questions, and regulators may follow. US West Inc. said Sprint may be trying to make an end run around the universal service fund, which collects money from phone companies to subsidize the cost of local phone service in rural and other high-cost areas. "This is another example of long-distance companies looking to shirk their responsibility," said David Beigie, a spokesman for Denver-based US West Communications. Andrew