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Technology Stocks : FRANKLIN TELECOM (FCM) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mitch Aunger who wrote (307)	4/28/1999 3:08:00 PM
From: VALUESPEC	Respond to of 2891

ATT is about to eat the little peanut? <HOT off the VAlUESPEC think-tank> ATT is quickly amasing the infrastructure to offer the "last mile" solution to a huge market. "What market it that?", Franklin Telecom holders might want to ask themselves. While some companies dream about offering for sale products to make voice on the internet much less expensive than today's quickly falling long distance charges, a number of people speculate that we will one day (in the not-so-distant-future) receieve voice on the net for free. When might this happen? It is all about bandwidth. Companies like ATHM, WGAT, etc., are selling the technology to cable companies which will enable them to offer bandwidths about 500X larger powerful than some of today's modems. ATT has another approach in mind. They will create an amalgamation of cable companies in order to give them ownership of not only the fiber opic networks, but also give them door to door access to the 48 states. Their recent announcement of inention to buy Media One, is an example of their aggressive approach to owning the entire internet hiway (well, sort of. They would have the cability of servicing just about everybody). Not only is ATT trying to own the last mile in order to offer high bandwidth solutions to its customers (solutions will include local calls, long distance, TV, internet, video, mobile phones, etc.), but America On-line considers increasing band-width for the internet one of its top goals. If they can increase bandwidth, they can offer free internet calls which would really keep customers coming to them! In summary, voice will be free on the internet. The long-term prospects of small companies in this field looks poor, IMO. The change-over is coming soon. Many cities, even as I write this, are building the high-speed cable modem networks. Some already have them. We will have free movies, video, or voice thanks to companies like RNWK (Have you seen the Real Video Player? If not, you should download it now for free from real.com, because that is just the tip of the iceberg that is barreling towards FTEL, IMO. Also, do you pay for your banking services? NetB@ank (NTBK)offers free checking with interest of about 4%! And they pay for the checks and allow you to make payments over the internet! They can do this because they don't own any branch offices! They are completely cyber! Comments on my insights are welcome. Regarding FCM specifically, I have no opinion on it as a holding. FTEL has made surprising strides forward in the last couple quarters (well, at least to me), but given FCM's past (under the symbol FTEL), I personally doubt anything they say or do (didn't the Intrine order sound good, didn't many other announcements "sound" good, etc.). If I had the inclination, I'd crawl over the books to get a better handle on how they are handling things like revenue and expenses. The SEC has been upset with many companies (like CD) which are way too aggressive with claming revenues even before they get paid. How much of these revenues has FCM actually collected? Will they really collect from USAT? What happened to USAT? Isn't/weren't they FCM's biggest customer? Can someone fill me in? FTEL: ~$ 2.50 VALUESPEC