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Technology Stocks : LAST MILE TECHNOLOGIES - Let's Discuss Them Here -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Hiram Walker who wrote (1676)	7/26/1998 4:29:00 PM
From: MikeM54321	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 12823

Thread, I just read an interesting article about Qwest. As most are aware, they are building an all fibre-optic network of immense proportions. When they are finished they will have laid 18,409 miles of fibre. The network will be based on Internet Protocol technology. They have already cut a deal, with two baby bells, for local access (or bells cut a deal for long distance access) with US West and Ameritech. They already have 9,000 miles complete. They offer high-speed IP access in the West along with, "Voice on IP." And just about now, they should be up and running with an ATM/Frame Relay backbone and offer voice to another 25 cities. Now here is some important information for infrastructure investors: Optic fibre comes from Lucent. Optical electronics come from Nortel. Routers come from Cisco. Voice switches come from Nortel. Deploying an Ascend ATM/Frame Relay backbone. So they build this massive high capacity, high bandwidth, network. But they have no idea on how their teleco partners plan on solving the last mile problem. Here's what Nacchio (Qwest CEO) says about it. "The real frustration in the US relates to the local bottleneck, where you cannot get high-speed connectivity into the homes. They are just starting to put out things like xDSL technology. The cable modem development has been much slower than people anticipated. Wireless does not seem to be a viable alternative. I think the frustrations in American households and business are happening very quickly, but we will start pushing it across the whole system. That will eventually break the bottleneck." Since we are all talking about how VoIP isn't ready for prime time, how come Qwest is already offering it to their customers at $.07/minute? Plus, why do they need voice switches from Nortel if their network is IP based? The interview with Nacchio was a little confusing and left questions unanswered. Thanks, MikeM(From Florida)