Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Technology Stocks : Newbridge Networks -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: larry pollock who wrote (6675)	9/24/1998 5:57:00 PM
From: fumble	Respond to of 18016

I saw Pat at the meeting, mostly surrounded by very knowledgeable looking people, but we did have a chance to chat briefly. I am looking forward to her report. Secondhand information from someone who went to the breakout session with Al Lutz - Newbridge is a bit disappointed with the progress of Siemen's 36190. NN could use a box at the high end of the ATM range. This was echoed during his morning presentation (or was it Conrad Lewis' presentation?). He said that NN was moving along with a 50Gbit upgrade at the top end of the 36170 range, but it was not to the point where they could brag about it yet. Conrad Lewis also mentioned that they were close on to announcing a SDSL card (Symmetric DSL) which would, in cooperation with a customer located box, supply T1/E1 over normal conditioned copper loop. Lewis mentioned that these copper loops could be obtained from PacBell in the Silicon Valley area for $20/mo. An entrepreneur with a box full of these SDSL cards could sell T1/E1 lines locally for $120/mo and would have customers beating on his door. It seems like a good business for the first fellows in the door. 3com would make the customer-end boxes. TM and others also mentioned the directory services business of FastLane. This Affiliate has been concentrating on tools for the maintenance of huge directories (names, passwords, permissions, capabilities, etc) for computer networks in large companies. They are working closely with Microsoft and have successfully provided tools which scale up to very large networks. (Scale means that the access/change times do not go up with the square of the number of users..) (A Newbridge customer): MaxLink's Deputy Chairman, Joel Bell, gave an interesting presentation during the Wed morning session on their wireless metro networking system. MaxLink has licenses for 33 Canadian markets to supply wide bandwidth (10Mhz+) connectivity for their customers. The scheme uses a 1Ghz wide radio channel at 28Ghz with multiple line-of-sight paths connecting each node to the mesh. Over the last year they have provided service to beta customers with quite satisfactory results using 3 nodes in the downtown area of Ottawa (click on baobab.net to see video clips from one of their early customers). The radios and antennas are off the shelf from multiple suppliers and the networking equipment is Newbridge (I saw a few blinking 36150's in racks in their downtown showroom). This approach offers a different economic model as compared to fiber, but provides the same large bandwidth. Tue evening, I had a great conversation with a young lady who was a VP in the switching products group (sorry I did not get the name). We talked about the relative invisibility of Newbridge in the US Trade press. NN has built a better mousetrap, but it needs to tell its story, at least with a signal strength to match their competition. We toyed with the idea of launching another NN Affiliate - one charged with the responsibility of telling the Newbridge story and assisting NN and other Affiliates with pre-sales information and sales engineering assistance. Sort of a one-stop spot for a customer to learn what solutions are available from Newbridge and its Affiliate team. We had trouble coming up with a viable funding model for this new Affiliate, so she suggested that it would be a 'cost center' rather than an Affiliate. During Al Lutz' Wed morning presentation, he emphasized the idea of 'responsible persons' rather than diffused team responsibilities. Perhaps the head of this new 'cost center' could be charged with the responsibility of making Newbridge visible in the marketplace. I have to run now, but will send more when I have time.