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Technology Stocks : LAST MILE TECHNOLOGIES - Let's Discuss Them Here -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Frank A. Coluccio who wrote (3302)	4/3/1999 12:58:00 PM
From: Hiram Walker	Respond to of 12823

Frank et all, LMDS/MMDS wireless is coming,and its looking like NextLink,MCI and AT&T are pretty high on it. MCI just spent about 400 million buying up old wireless cable companies. NextLink is going around buying up all the LMDS spectrum. I wonder if this is going to go better for T this time with Project Angel. Wireless Advances Push AT&T, MCI By FRED DAWSON April 5, 1999 Recent advances in wireless-broadband technology are reshaping the lineup of players pursuing nationwide rollouts, drawing Craig McCaw's Nextlink Communications Inc., AT&T Corp. and MCI WorldCom into the competition with the leaders -- Teligent Inc. and Winstar Communications Inc. "We've seen a significant improvement in the technology since the LMDS auctions were held," said Nextlink spokesman Todd Wolfenbarger, in reference to last year's local-multipoint-distribution-service auction. "We may have paid a little more [for spectrum] than we would have then, but we believe that we've attained a great deal of flexibility to reach a larger market at very reasonable costs," Wolfenbarger added. Nextlink is now the biggest player in LMDS, which uses the 28-gigahertz spectrum tier. AT&T and WinStar are operating at 38 GHz, Teligent at 24 GHz and MCI WorldCom at 2.5 GHz. But all of them are tapping the same types of technical advances that allow carriers to deliver point-to-multipoint interactive services of every description in a highly flexible, user-friendly manner without having to connect users to high-speed landlines. Nextlink recently acquired the 1.15-GHz LMDS A-block licenses to 39 markets, representing a population (POPs, or units of population) of 98 million people, from the leading LMDS-auction winner, a start-up called WNP Communications Inc. Nextlink paid WNP $542.1 million for the licenses and another $152.9 million in license fees to the Federal Communications Commission for the A-block licenses and for one B-block license at 150 megahertz. Nextlink also took full control of 13 additional A-block and 29 B-block LMDS licenses by buying out Nextel Communications' 50 percent interest in the two companies' joint wireless-broadband venture, NextBand. These holdings give Nextlink 1.15 GHz of spectrum to use in territories covering approximately 95 percent of the POPs in the top 30 markets, which is far more spectrum per market than its rivals have in most of their markets. At the same time, like AT&T and MCI WorldCom, Nextlink is using fixed wireless links to extend local market coverage from a base of fiber rings interconnected by a long-haul fiber backbone. "The ability to combine fiber and wireless to reach small and medium-sized businesses gives us an enormous advantage over companies that are either all-wireline or all-wireless," Wolfenbarger said. In the wireline mode, he noted, the company can cost-justify building fiber out to buildings only about one-quarter of a mile from the rings, leaving it to lease T-1 facilities from telcos for deeper reach into the market if it didn't have the wireless broadband. "Wireless gives us buildings two-and-a-half miles away from our rings and allows us to own the facilities," he said. AT&T's Business Services unit has amassed licenses that allow it to use at least 100 MHz of spectrum in 305 markets to deliver the package of switched-voice, frame-relay, asynchronous-transfer-mode and Internet-protocol services envisioned in its recently announced Integrated Network Connection plan. Much of this spectrum was acquired with its purchase of Teleport Communications Group, which earlier had acquired 38-GHz license holder BizTel.AT&T has been using point-to-point wireless connections at 38 GHz to quickly connect customers that aren't immediately reachable via wireline facilities, said Roger Cawley, a spokesman for AT&T Business Services. Now, Cawley said, AT&T is evaluating point-to-multipoint systems for delivering fixed dedicated services from transmitters over market areas measuring about three miles in diameter. "We're probably looking at the machines coming out of beta-testing at Lucent [Technologies]," he added. AT&T's Business Services unit has amassed licenses that allow it to use at least 100 MHz of spectrum in 305 markets to deliver the package of switched-voice, frame-relay, asynchronous-transfer-mode and Internet-protocol services envisioned in its recently announced Integrated Network Connection plan. MCI WorldCom -- which is reportedly acquiring the rights to spectrum held by wireless cable operators for delivery of two-way telecommunications and data services -- will have up to 180 MHz to use. MCI WorldCom would also enjoy the advantage of being able to reach more customers per transmitter, due to the longer reach of signals at the 2.5-GHz MMDS (multichannel multipoint distribution service) frequency tier multichannel.com Hiram