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Technology Stocks : Voice-on-the-net (VON), VoIP, Internet (IP) Telephony -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Barbara Barry who wrote (1794)	11/1/1998 1:11:00 PM
From: Frank A. Coluccio	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 3178

Barbara, we recently did a scan on Nextlink for the very reasons that you are inquiring. That is, to find that special networking chemistry that would suggest that they are in line for some serious IP convergence movement. Didn't find any. What, with their (McCaw's) infusion into LVLT of close to three quarters of a Billion [$700,000,000], I would have thought that they were ready to rock 'n roll down the IP path. But they are not... or at least they are not letting on that they are, if in fact they are. This leads me to wonder whether the deal between the two was more than just rights for NXLK to use LVLT's facilities. Memories of the XCOM acquisition surface here, whereby LVLT was in need of a "bridge" company to marry its IP services across traditional switched networks. But I only speculate about this, and as all that I state here, these are only my personal thoughts and opinions. If you look at their published offerings, you will find that they don't get more POTS/PSTN and AIN than Nextlink. Their published descriptions of their services and offerings indicate to me that they are slated to continue along the path of what George Gilder calls the "DS Zero Cage" crowd. Data services center on T1 and PRI capabilities, and voice is straight out of the DID, 800 Number, and Follow me genre which depends exclusively on SS7 and PSTN service control point-connected databases (SCPs). Their voice services, in fact, read like they are straight out of the advanced information networking (AIN) Cook Book. It appears that this is one of those companies presently investing heavily into the traditional nets, as I alluded to in a previous post of mine here in the VON thread: Message 6240029 >>We're looking at some very large announced plans for acquisitions and roll outs for next year, which very definitely are NOT Internet- [IP-] based. And these will no doubt need time to depreciate and migrate. At the same time, ATM deployments are up from where they were a year ago, [ even IP Barons Crowe and Nacchio have announced dependencies on it. << Perhaps they are not showing their hand right now, or maybe my information is stale... whatever the case is, they are not putting much effort forward to suggest that they are among the leading edge of next generation technology adopters at this point in time. I'll continue to investigate this company, hoping to find that there's more under the covers than what we've found thus far. But surprisingly, it doesn't seem that way today. However, things can change in this respect in a flash. Regards, Frank Coluccio