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Technology Stocks : Voice-on-the-net (VON), VoIP, Internet (IP) Telephony -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bill who wrote (958)	7/10/1998 11:35:00 AM
From: Frank A. Coluccio	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3178

Bill, concerning the RBOC's local loop assets, of course, the other school of thought states: >After all, that's all they really have. < But is that all they really have? Anyone? Ten years ago, the answer to that question would have seemed at the time to be an obvious 'yes.' Today's competing technologies, however, both from within the ILECs and from outside, may relegate these twisted metallic assets to the status of liability or excess baggage, in many instances. The ILECs themselves are planning to replace their extant copper with fiber overbuilds from the edge out (the FTTx family of architectures) over time, and the remaining longer metallic loops may just find themselves hot on the block (pun intended). In some situations where the BOC may lose heart in pursuing this older technology, I can see how they might want to dress up the facilities for a fire sale and realize an appreciable pop in their treasuries. More likely, however, they will go the route of resale vendors, eventually, whether they are forced to, or because they finally see the business case to support this direction. Witness ION, competitive forces now presented by T, and the incumbents' inability to react in time. The latter would lend itself to offering premium services to DSL resale organizations, since the ILECs are too slow and clumsy to do it themselves in a meaningful time frame. This is what may happen in Florida (see the upstream Court Case post concerning Supra and Bell South), where the BOC lost the decision, but may want to leverage that 'loss' to its own advantage. Surely, no single assessment will fit all scenarios, but I do believe that sufficient variance in the business model exists between the different categories of outside plant, whether because of geographics, terrain, competitive forces, whatever, to support both schools of thought on an individual case specific basis. Any thoughts on this, Bill? Anyone? Regards, Frank C.