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To: ahhaha who wrote (2575)	7/27/1998 1:19:00 PM
From: Michael P. Michaud	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 29970

ahhaha, nice posts over the past few days...much to contemplate about. Any opinion re: today's price action? Don't get me wrong, I'm with you guys for the long term, just curious if the T-Bty news is having any impact? Could I also ask your opinion of Worldcom (WCOM) on a technical as well as a fundamental basis? Thanx, Mike

To: ahhaha who wrote (2575)	8/1/1998 6:53:00 PM
From: ahhaha	Respond to of 29970

Sprint Defends Integrated Network By Carol Wilson, Inter@ctiveweek, 7/27/98 Sprint Corp. officials are countering some healthy skepticism about their plans to deliver the faster data access of the Integrated On-demand Network to residential customers by admitting that local competition plays a significant role in ION's mass market success. The company is also stressing what it calls its unique approach to integrating Internet Protocol (IP) with Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) switching to create the next-generation network. In announcing ION, a broadband network delivering data, video and voice services, the company emphasized plans to buy local lines from Bell companies and other local phone companies and resell them after equipping them with Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line(ADSL) technology. But at a mid-July briefing on ION, Sprint officials admitted that local competition is its best hope. "We will not be dependent on one carrier. We think there will be multiple providers of that access" says Terri Morrow, assistant vice president of emerging markets at Sprint Consumer Service. "Whether this technology reaches the market is really dependent on whether the companies who are installing it have made it a priority." Those partner companies might include cable companies, companies that purchased broadband wireless spectrum, or competitive local exchange carriers (CLECs). Executives at two CLECS,both of which have begun putting ADSL technology into their networks, have told Inter@ctive Week they are in discussions with, Sprint (www.sprint.com). In each case, they decline to talk on the record, citing promises of confidentiality made to Sprint officials. "We think there are multiple ways that we will be able to reach the consumer market" says Fred Harris, director of network planning and design at Sprint Technology Services. "We are talking to CLECS, but we aren't announcing who just yet." Sprint has partnered with all five Bell companies, but those partnerships are based on delivering services to business customers, using the fiberoptic networks that the Bells have installed in major metropolitan areas. "The Bell partnership was our strategy, the way that AT&T [Corp.s] buying TCG [Teleport Communications Group] and MCI [Communications Corp.s] starting MCIMetro was their local strategy," Harris says. Those partnerships can be used to deliver ION capabilities to businesses within reach of the Bell company fiber networks. Morrow is convinced that consumers will clamor for ION because, among other things, they would be able to get multiple lines on demand.In fact, she says she believes customers will be willing to pay for installation charges, including the cost of sending technicians to the home to install the customer interface device. "We just don't see that as a problem," she says. That bandwidth-:on-demand feature is part of what Sprint developed over a three-year period, Harris says. "This is absolutely unique in the industry - you can't buy it today from any vendor." The ION service will encapsulate all traffic in ATM cells at the business or on the side of a house. Instead of sending that traffic through the ATM switch, however, ION uses Bellcore-developed software and the signaling within the ATM cell stream to route each type of traffic to the appropriate device. Voice traffic, for example, is routed to a voice server that is separate from the switch. "This is what the Intelligent Network was supposed to be all along" Harris says, referring to the telecommunications industry's long effort to move service software and support off proprietary voice switches and onto open computing platforms. "This way I can build a bigger, faster switch without having to worry about all those thousands of lines of software code that are running on it." Much of the ION work was done internally, and Harris says Sprint holds substantial intellectual property rights for the network. But Sprint also is offering open Application Programming Interfaces into ION and has invited outside development of applications. "What IBM [Corp.] did with the PC, we want to do with the public network" he says. "We will build the infrastructure and put the building blocks m place and partner with whoever can build the applications. But the great part is, as we identify new features, it's not a matter of having to build a whole new network."