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.

Microcap & Penny Stocks : DGIV- Research Posts ONLY -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Rob W who wrote (22)	10/24/1998 10:23:00 PM
From: Rob W	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 44

Dire predictions A competitive carrier's future view By WAYNE WALLEY, Editor-in-Chief Fables--like the one about Chicken Little, who was convinced the sky was falling--come to mind whenever upstarts make bold predictions about the future, or lack of one, for telecommunications industry giants. With the advent of deregulation worldwide, monopoly carriers are under attack and will no doubt lose market share in an environment of open competition. But William Schrader, president and CEO of U.S.-based PSINet, isn't just saying the sky is falling for these players--he says there will be no sky, no "telephone" companies, whatsoever in five years. They will be called Internet service providers or whatever term is used in the future, he says. Such a statement sounds self-serving. PSINet is the largest independent commercial Internet service provider worldwide. As a facilities-based data communications carrier focused on the international business marketplace, PSINet has 400 points of presence extending to 11 countries. PSINet began focusing on this area in 1989, long before pundits were predicting the inevitability of data traffic surpassing voice. Today, every carrier worldwide is taking data and Internet protocol telephony seriously. "There's nobody in telecommunications who can afford to be outside the Internet, so they must offer ISP-type services," Schrader says. Schrader sees a change in attitude in the former dominant carriers, such as AT&T, BT, Deutsche Telekom, France Telecom and NTT. They are not going to miss out on the next great opportunity in telecommunications, he says. "Phone companies missed the understanding of what cellular phones were; it took new phone companies to get into that. Telephone companies missed the Internet," he maintains. "Telephone companies are not missing voice over IP. They are on top of this, so what you're going to see is the fastest possible change ever in the voice industry." He forecasts the end of usage-based billing, replaced completely by flat-rate pricing, and a time when voice services will be "free add-ons" as part of data communications deals. Switches for circuit-switched networks, he says, are "toast," dead. "Companies like Lucent and Nortel and Ericsson will produce add-ons to existing switches that extend the lifetime slightly," he says. "But in the end, those switches are gone. Not a single switch working today will be alive in five years any place on earth. There's no secondary market for that stuff." Jobs, particularly those to track calls and audit trails, will be gone, he adds. Schrader admits he might be wrong about his predictions--that is, all this could happen even faster, say in three years. What would Chicken Little do?