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Technology Stocks : Westell WSTL -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Anthony Tsai who wrote (14252)	12/7/1998 9:17:00 AM
From: Marc T. Archer	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 21342

The open ended contract calls for Westell to supply a full line of telecommunications access products,including SmartLink(TM) Automatic Protection Switches (APS), PROACT(TM) Performance Monitoring and SlimJack(TM) T1 Network Interface Units (NIUs) and high density T1 and HDSL mountings. In total, Westell will now have over 200 of its telecommunications access products standardized by GTE. How closely is all this stuff related to ADSL? Kinda funny, first PR in quite a while and no mention of anything ADSL other than the HDSL mountings, whatever that is. Anyone care to guesstimate what kind of profits there are in these things? Since I don't have much (translate=any) understanding about such things I'll reserve any exuberance until someone more knowledgeable than I can disseminate. At least it's not BAD news <g>. MTA

To: Anthony Tsai who wrote (14252)	12/7/1998 9:27:00 AM
From: Michael F. Donadio	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 21342

TO ALL: News on breaking open the local loop to ADSL Today. nytimes.com PC Makers and Bells in Joint Petition to FCC on Networks By SETH SCHIESEL Hoping to offer high-speed Internet access to more consumers, the biggest personal computer company and local telephone companies plan to petition the FCC Monday to relax regulations that they say are impeding network modernization. Compaq Computer and Gateway, together with Microsoft and Intel, plan to join with the Bell local phone companies and GTE to announce their allied effort Monday morning in Washington, according to executives involved in the group. The group contends that releasing the companies from such regulations will give them the financial incentive to invest the billions of dollars required to deliver corporate-caliber Internet access to residential consumers at reasonable prices. "We in the computer industry think we stand in the shoes of the consumers here because we both want broadband deployment and competition," Peter Pitsch, a former FCC official who is now communications policy director for Intel Corp., said in a telephone interview. "Broadband" is the industry term for high-speed communications services that can include text, images and even audio and video information. The group intends Monday to present the FCC with a statement of 10 principles that the companies say will promote the development of advanced data systems for consumers. It also means to begin lobbying members of Congress who have influence over communications policy. "If adopted, these principles would both promote competition and strengthen the incentives of the incumbent local telephone companies to promote broadband," Pitsch said. Under rules the FCC created in response to the Telecommunications Act of 1996, the local phone incumbents are required to sell access to different parts of their networks to competitors. But the computer-communications alliance wants the commission to let the phone companies reserve their advanced Internet communications equipment for their own use. The Bells have long said that the requirement to sell access to their systems reduces their incentives to invest in and build advanced data networks in the first place -- a point of view that the computer giants have come to embrace. "We don't want to undercut the incentives of the incumbent companies," Pitsch said. "Everyone is pretty much starting from ground zero when it comes to these data services, and if they take the risk, they ought to get the reward." .... Somehow I thought the FCC had already granted ILEC's the right to implement high speed upgrades and not having to lease them to competitors. Does anyone else remember that? Michael