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

To: djane who wrote (50417)	7/26/1998 11:43:00 PM
From: djane	Respond to of 61433

7/24/98 ASCEND COMMUN, INC Short Interest 07/24/98 17,964,674 06/24/98 19,107,110 % Chg -6.0 Avg Dly Volume 5,711,979 interactive.wsj.com

To: djane who wrote (50417)	7/26/1998 11:44:00 PM
From: djane	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 61433

Nasdaq Short Interest Rose 3.7% To a Record in the Latest Month interactive.wsj.com By DANIELLE SESSA, July 27, 1998 Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL NEW YORK -- Short interest rose 3.7% to a record in the latest month on the Nasdaq Stock Market. The total, which includes Nasdaq small-capitalization and large-capitalization stocks, climbed to 2,169,973,009 shares on July 15 from 2,092,546,674 shares, the previous high, in mid-June, according to Nasdaq. On the Nasdaq SmallCap Market, which is made up of the 1,288 smaller-cap stocks, short interest increased 17%. It rose 3.4% for the 4,111 larger-cap stocks on the Nasdaq National Market. Traders who sell "short" borrow shares and then sell them, betting they can profit by buying the stock back later at lower prices. Short interest is the number of shares that haven't been repurchased for return to lenders. As such, it is often taken as an indicator of the degree of negative sentiment among investors in the stocks. Investors may rely on short selling for other purposes, including as a hedging strategy related to corporate mergers and acquisitions, for convertible securities and options, and for tax purposes. The Nasdaq National Market's short-interest ratio fell to three days from 3.21 days in the previous month. The short-interest ratio for the smaller stocks rose to 1.24 from 0.84. The ratio is the number of trading days that would be required to close out the short positions through share purchases and is considered a measure of trading sentiment. The following companies had the largest decreases in short interest: CHS Electronics Inc., down 7,862,688 shares to 3,421,177; Intel Corp., off 7,506,853 shares to 26,386,002; Dell Computer Corp., down 5,250,242 shares to 28,127,996; Sun Microsystems Inc., off 4,709,140 shares to 10,630,105, and E*Trade Group Inc., down 3,365,823 shares to 4,771,011. The following companies had the largest increases in short interest: WorldCom Inc., up 20,254,784 shares to 137,208,492; ADC Telecommunications Inc., up 16,179,356 shares to 18,720,790; Tellabs Inc., up 7,565,970 shares to 25,929,757; Microsoft Corp., up 5,983,798 shares to 35,571,116, and Tele-Communications Class A, up 5,457,859 shares to 26,361,082. Among companies with the largest short-interest positions, Washington Mutual Inc. was up 3,394,976 shares to 37,140,839; Boston Chicken Inc. increased 1,468,608 shares to 21,249,355; Informix Corp. was up 219,137 shares to 19,039,821; Cisco Systems Inc. rose 1,208,861 shares to 18,951,309 and Oracle Corp. was down 2,756,952 shares to 17,069,260. Nasdaq short-interest figures will next be published Aug. 26. Return to top of page \| Format for printing Copyright c 1998 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

To: djane who wrote (50417)	7/27/1998 1:54:00 AM
From: djane	Respond to of 61433

"ISPs into CLECs" article [Nice ASND references] (from the excellent VoIP thread) Talk : Communications : Voice-on-the-net (VON), VoIP, Internet (IP) Telephony \| Previous \| Next \| Respond \| To: Atin Malaviya (0 ) From: Frank A. Coluccio Saturday, Jul 25 1998 10:08PM ET Reply # of 1031 "ISPs into CLECs" By Ken Branson [[Good article in X-Change Magazine on "The Technological Challenges" associated with transforming the ISP into a bona fide CLEC. Of course, this has a telco industry slant, but what the hey... we're looking for balance, right? Anyhow, that's what will make this work -- a considerable degree of backwards compatibility. The article in its entirety can be viewed at: x-changemag.com It is also presented for posterity, below. Enjoy, and Best Regards, Frank C.]] ================from: X-Change Magazine ISPs into CLECs --The Technological Challenges By Ken Branson Last month, X-CHANGE published a story about Internet service providers (ISPs) becoming competitive local exchange carriers (CLECs). As the article explained, it's a non-trivial task, and not for everyone. Once an ISP has been certified in the states where it wants to do business and it has negotiated interconnection agreements with the incumbent LECs (ILECs), its task has just begun. There is the little matter of buying what one telecom person calls "the toys"--the hardware that constitutes the network and the software that makes it run. For ISPs who came up the entrepreneurial ladder, that can be a revelation. David Markowitz, a marketing manager at Ascend Communications Inc., represents a company that made its name taking care of those entrepreneurs when they started out. But Ascend knows the times are changing. "We're seeing a lot of folks in the ISP space that want to move forward," Markowitz says. "We had a pretty good run in the ISP space. Used to be any guy living at home could buy our box, put it under the bed, and he's in business. Now, one of our boxes, say, the Ascend 4048 [router], is available in the low tens of thousands of dollars." Ascend became a billion-dollar company on the backs of nerds-turned-entrepreneurs, but sees its future in the more sophisticated systems needed by the next generation of ISPs. Ascend will offer a series of seminars around the country this summer for ISPs wanting to make the CLEC move. Doug Hanson, president and CEO of Rocky Mountain Internet Inc. (RMI), finds himself leading a newly minted, officially certified CLEC in the state of Colorado. He admits he hasn't focused seriously on the technical nitty gritty, being as yet knee-deep in the political issues of negotiating interconnect agreements with neighboring carriers, and keeping up with RMI's "day job" of providing high-speed Internet access. And since RMI will be a switchless reseller, Hanson thinks the technical challenges will be less daunting for his company than they would be if RMI was to be a facilities-based CLEC. But he sees a higher level technical issue, and believes he knows the answer to it. "The bigger issue, as it relates to, say a [Lucent Technologies Inc.] 5ESS, is: Why would you buy one anyway?" he says. "With the technology moving to IP (Internet protocol), you wouldn't want to buy a 5ESS because you'll be able to do everything you could do with a 5ESS over IP. So the question is: What are people going to do with all those 5ESSs they've bought?" The Data Place Inc., an ISP in Newark, Del., has filed for CLEC status in that state. Its vice president of operations, William Stritzinger, says his company will start off as a switchless reseller and then "in about a year, we have to get facilities-based." For now, he doesn't have to answer Hanson's question about buying switches. But he has no illusions about the technical challenges and their associated costs that face his company. Many of those challenges stem from being a telco among telcos. "From an expertise standpoint, you still have to know the telco jargon, how to provision lines, how the interconnect agreement and service agreements will be working, how the back office stuff will work," Stritzinger says. "Physically, if you're just a reseller, having someone who understands SONET (synchronous optical networking) isn't necessary. It's really an office thing," he says. "The billing--everybody underestimates it. Consulting fees were $70,000 to $80,000, and that doesn't include software and the people who maintain it." Stritzinger's experience is not unique, according to Jeffrey Kagan, president of Kagan Telecom Associates, a telecom consulting firm based in Marietta, Ga. "[ISPs] have to have the systems and processes that would be needed [to offer telephone service]," Kagan says. "That means call centers, customer service operations. It would definitely mean the ability to bill and provision the service. Offering local service is not easy, as the long distance companies have discovered. The companies making it [as CLECs] have had a lot of investment. They have really dedicated themselves to providing service in many states, and there are economies of scale involved. You can't justify doing this in just one or two states." Kagan adds it might be easier to buy a small CLEC than to become one. All the technical grunt work already would have been done. Bill Plunkett, vice president of CLEC marketing at Lucent Technologies Inc., points out that the 5ESS is designed for flexibility, and that the newer versions--the 5ESS 2000, for instance--are made for smaller telcos. His company also makes an Internet telephony server, and he sees nothing wrong with Hanson's reliance on IP as the way to go. After all, Qwest Communications International Inc., GST Telecommuni-cations Inc. and Concentric Network Corp. have gone that way. But Plunkett sees the technological challenge for ISPs on the software side. "Other technological barriers are billing and customer service systems," he says. "This is much different from flat-rate billing; it's measured. Even classical CLECs get tripped up on those things. They have trouble billing and taking care of their customers. By the end of the year, though, there should be some very good systems available."