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

To: djane who wrote (51604)	8/4/1998 7:04:00 PM
From: djane	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 61433

Interesting post from 3Com thread. Benhamou meeting w/employees [I guess COMS is off LU's list. Who else is left other than ASND?] Talk : Communications : 3Com \| Previous \| Next \| Respond \| Earnings \| To: Daniel Levin (20134 ) From: 3Com Boy Tuesday, Aug 4 1998 4:09PM ET Reply # of 20149 TO ALL: Just left a meeting where Eric B. spoke to the 3Com employees in Chicago concerning the latest happenings at 3Com. I thought you'd all like a summary. Q. Why is the stock price so low? (Actually, Eric B. asked this one himself to anticipate the question) A. (Paraphrased) Actually, I'm pissed off about how low the stock price is. I'm more conviced now that we've turned the corner than when I address the analyst's in June. We're going to have a good Q1 and poised for an outstanding Q2. The stock will respond. The analysts who spend most of their time following our day to day operations are bullish on our future. The people who actually buy stock have been hesistent. I'm confident that will turn around. Q. Are we going to get bought out (Again, Eric asked the question in anticipation)? No, we're not for sale. We have no desire to be purchased. We feel that we will give our shareholders a better return in the long run being independent. Our strategy is and will continue to be to grow through JV and strategic partnerships. Not through being acquired. Eric then berratted BAY by sayiing they had to sell because they were a weak company and didn't have any options. 3com has several positive options that will ensure the growth of coms. CSCO has spurred partnerships by going head to head with the NT's, LU, ERICY's of the world. We're in a much better position to accomplish our growth goals than they are. He then answered questions from the crowd concerning the following: China: 3Com has won or on the verge of winning several major orders in China. We have a commanding lead in market share. More than CSCO and BAY combined. He's very bullish on the fact that they're well positioned in a country that still is moving up the growth curve. Microsoft/COMS relationship: coms and msft are involved in over 80 different projects together. CSCO has severely overstated their partnership with MSFT. Eric will be meeting with Gates and his team over the next few weeks to discuss the continuation of their partnership. MSFT is very pleased that COMS has chosen NT as their platform in the carrier and client access product lines. As for the Palm Pilot, that obviously is a area in which they're competing. However, there will be a standardization happening and both companies should be able to co-exist through creating standards. E-Business: FY99 will be the year in which 3com starts a program where they start selling products over the web. This will be the future for 3com. HAN (Home Area Networ): Eric has a HAN at his house. He believes that this is the next great marketplace for the next 20 years. The largest housing developer in California is currently building houses of all sizes as "netowrk ready". Please let me know if any of you have any questions. Overall, it was an upbeat meeting!! Q.

To: djane who wrote (51604)	8/5/1998 1:26:00 PM
From: djane	Respond to of 61433

FCC Aims to Hasten Faster Internet Lines [RBOCs and DSL info] washingtonpost.com By Mike Mills Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, August 5, 1998; Page D11 In a ruling designed to speed delivery of advanced Internet service to American homes, federal telephone regulators plan to propose tomorrow to abolish a requirement that the Bell telephone companies lease to competitors any data-delivery services they may offer to their customers. The proposed rules, if formally enacted, would mark the most significant regulatory freedom the Federal Communications Commission has given the Bell companies to date, despite their monopolistic control over most of the $110 billion local telephone market. Officials hope the rules will become final by year's end. The rules do not go as far as the Bells wanted, agency officials said. They won't, for example, give the Bells the freedom to carry Internet data transmissions across local calling boundaries. But they will grant the Bells' wishes to offer a service known as "digital subscriber line" (DSL) on an unregulated basis, free of requirements that elements of the technology be made available to all competitors at discounted prices. DSL services can carry full-motion video and can transfer complex graphics in an instant, in contrast to the tiresome delays common in conventional "dial-up" access to the Internet. Because the Bell companies' lines are typically the only mode through which such a service can be delivered, the FCC has required the Bell companies to allow competitors to avail themselves of any new technology the companies install. FCC Chairman William E. Kennard yesterday called the current rules a "disincentive" that keeps the Bells from making greater investments in DSL and other high-speed data links. "There is pent-up demand for high-speed Internet access," Kennard said. "If we can unleash the potential of this technology, it will release a whole bonanza of opportunities." Critics of the FCC's proposal, including the "Big Three" long-distance companies, AT&T Corp., MCI Communications Corp. and Sprint Corp., say the move will harm the propagation of faster Internet links by allowing the Bells to monopolize the field. The Bells, they said, should not get regulatory relief until they meet requirements under the Telecommunications Act of 1996 to open their local telephone networks to competition. Sprint, for example, plans to offer local DSL service to homes and businesses using its own data equipment at customer premises and a neighborhood telephone switch. But it needs the Bells for connections to the local copper phone "loop" that runs from the switch to each house and building. "We're still at the mercy of the Bell companies," said John Hoffman, a Sprint senior vice president. "They can control our level of service, our continuity of service and whether we have service at all." Under the proposed rules, which the FCC is enacting by the authority of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, the Bell companies still would have to lease elements of their networks to competitors. But they would not be required to lease the service itself. Instead, the Bells could offer the new data services through separate unregulated subsidiaries. Similar to other competitors, the subsidiary would lease elements of the network from its parent Bell company. FCC officials contend that competitors of the Bells will be helped by the move. A Bell's separate data affiliate, they argue, would be thrown into the marketplace -- unaided by its parent Bell company -- and forced to connect to its parent company's network the way all rivals must do. The affiliate, for example, would have to bargain for the right price to connect its data equipment to phone lines and haggle for space in each central office switch to place its equipment. But the history of phone company subsidiaries argues the opposite, critics say. The cellular industry is an example, according to an FCC filing by local carrier Nextlink Corp. The Bells, which received one of two cellular licenses in each of their markets, routinely favored their own separate cellular affiliates by denying rivals a connection to phone networks or charging exorbitant rates for those connections, the filing said. c Copyright 1998 The Washington Post Company