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Technology Stocks : METROMEDIA FIBER NETWORK (MFNX) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: SteveG who wrote (202)	2/12/1999 8:44:00 AM
From: Frank A. Coluccio	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1983

Steve G, You present some good contrast, and some good additional insights here. Thanks. WMB is on my screen [as an industry consultant, that is] as well. It was only recently that I recommended to one consortium, which is large enough to be considered Tier 2 carrier scale, to include WMB for consideration in their RFI/RFP for a future broadband initiative. Re LVLT's dogma concerning IP, you note: >> Crowe and LVLT are pushing the envelope. There are many who think an all IP approach is a very high risk homerun swing. I tend to agree. << To extend the metaphor, if they are able to get to third base with IP, it may only be a squeeze bunt from ATM that they are looking for to get them to The Plate. Early on in this thread I was sometimes overly critical, admittedly, of their stated intentions to remain purist IP, versus what they were actually doing. Witness their acquisition of XCOM and the purchase of ATM core backbone equipment for backbone deployments. I now view those earlier decisions as a certain amount of license that they needed to exercise in order to allow for transitioning For several reasons, I'm not convinced that they will be able to pull off the ultimate Pure IP umbrella once they get past the transition state that has thus far served as a shield for their departures from IP, due to some other changes taking place in the overall networking environment, including initiatives that stem from the Internet's IETF, itself. Some of these call for harmonization with extant protocols such as SS7, and some call for integration with ATM. To some degree it's ironic that LVLT is among those companies active in those working groups, and, in fact, actually serves as the chair on some of those initiatives. I take these developments to be a form of tacit acknowledgement on their part that they now understand that yesterday's pure IP is not going to cut it. I just don't know why they continue to espouse it without making the qualifications I've cited above. Add to this the fact that they are now earning revenues from the sale of bulk bandwidth, and we see a different LVLT emerging than what was originally thought. These are not negative development, as they will be responsible for earlier forms of revenue than they otherwise would have realized. Returning to WMB, are there any good public docs that you can point me to that are more revealing about their strategy than what appears on the surface? Anything along those lines would be appreciated. Best Regards, Frank Coluccio