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Technology Stocks : IDT *(idtc) following this new issue?* -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: jeer who wrote (1666)	1/28/1999 11:17:00 PM
From: ilh1	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 30916

Its a BB stock, that board is for BIG BOARDS only.

To: jeer who wrote (1666)	1/28/1999 11:34:00 PM
From: Secret_Agent_Man	Respond to of 30916

The Tech Boom Will Keep On Rocking Phones Get Swallowed Andrew Kupfer We're witnessing the Information Age equivalent of pigs being swallowed by snakes: Fat chunks of the conventional telecom business are getting absorbed by the Internet and new digital long-distance networks. Most people have heard by now that the Internet can let you make phone calls virtually for free. Contrary to the hype, your phone company won't be begging you to make such calls anytime soon. But businesses will use the Internet to send reams of data and faxes, while phone companies retool so that consumers can get data they want at home more quickly--music, say, or video. As Ford Cavallari of Renaissance Worldwide, a Boston consulting company, says, "If 1998 was the year when phone companies made the commitment to the Internet, 1999 is going to be the year when the pipes are filled with better stuff." Networks that speak the Internet's language--Internet protocol, or IP for short--enjoy a huge advantage as communications mediums. That's because, unlike traditional "switched" phone networks, IP breaks a signal into tiny bits that share the wires with scads of other traffic, radically reducing the cost per message or call. As with most new digital technologies, corporations are the first big beneficiaries. So-called virtual private networks (VPNs) mimic the expensive leased lines companies use to send masses of information. VPNs also let employees log on to the office network from home or the road. The newest VPNs--likely to dwarf all others in significance--connect companies to their customers and suppliers; one is ANX, for Automotive Network Exchange, a huge IP network serving the auto industry. Also likely to bloom this year is the market for IP fax. When companies like General Motors, Ford, or Citibank need to exchange faxes across oceans, they incur costs that can run from $30 to $60 an hour. According to telecom analyst Andrew Zimmerman of Price Waterhouse Coopers, using an IP network to carry the faxes could cut those hourly costs to $4. Growing, too, but not as quickly, is the business that's drawing the heaviest hype: the consumer market for IP phone calls. The Internet isn't yet stable enough to carry masses of phone calls, being prone to the sort of time lags that used to make satellite phone calls so exasperating. New carriers like Qwest and Level 3, though, are nearly finished building networks expressly designed for data traffic; they should deliver high-quality IP phone calls. Qwest already offers an IP calling plan; AT&T is experimenting with one as well. The prices aren't that much lower than the cheapest long-distance calling plans, in part because the new carriers need to recoup their investments. Still, the savings will encourage some consumers to embrace IP calling, among them college students, who will happily endure garbles for the thrill of saving a few cents, and recent immigrants, who place many calls to regions with very high phone tariffs, such as Eastern Europe and Latin America. Says Zimmerman: "Immigrants may end up using cash-and-carry storefronts, where you pay for the call and make it on the premises." No matter how agile the Internet and the new IP long-distance networks become, consumers hoping to download music and videos may still face maddening delays. That's because most households today connect to the outside world via puny copper wires; downloading a single song can take seven or eight minutes. But local and long-distance phone companies are finally ready to invest heavily in squeezing more information over those lines. MCI WorldCom chief technical officer Fred Briggs says his company's big push this year will be in DSL, short for "digital subscriber line"--special modems that can increase the capacity of copper wires 20-fold now and, he claims, 1,000-fold within a couple of years. Cable TV companies, meanwhile, will continue to push their version of high-speed modems, 600,000 of which are already in U.S. homes. Then telecom companies will face the real crunch: As new technology lowers their expenses and new competition forces their prices down to cost, the riddle will be how to make money. For businesses and consumers, that's good news. pathfinder.com