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Technology Stocks : AT&T -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: lml who wrote (2313)	5/5/1999 12:10:00 PM
From: rrufff	Respond to of 4298

Interesting post - as for wireless, do you think MCOM would fit in?

To: lml who wrote (2313)	5/5/1999 7:54:00 PM
From: matt gray	Respond to of 4298

most upgrades that I'm familiar with have high fiber rich systems. Fiber runs very deep into the system. One amp max from the customer. No more cascaded amplifiers, no more service calls. I suggest that they will have/find ways to eliminate congestion that is less costly than Bell would believe. Meanwhile fiber prices fell 20% last year. CATV has figured out how to build plant using HFC technology. They build it cheap and with high quality. They've architected their switching at the headend and thru intelligent boxes at the customer premisys so no plant rework is required to turn customers on. This is a huge advantage over the junk plant that the bells are holding onto waiting to enter into the long distance market. The bells figured that long distance was their saviour and now the competition is eroding their local loop business. This erosion will continue if not accelerate. From a techical standpoint the bells will get pounded by the MSOs and AT&T realized this. The only rub is that the MSOs have acquired significant debt that they've yet to realize a significant return on. The RBOCs have a significant pile of cash but hold systems which were designed in the 1920's...I know of specific expamples where 1920s installed cable plant is still in use. IP telephony over HFC will show how significant the CATVs position is. This is the big unknown. The vast amount of Bell revenue still remains in the switched voice business. One thought about ADSL, try ordering an ADSL circuit, getting colocation agreements, have them condition the circuits and do all of this in a timely fashion. Forget about it with the Bells its a nightmare. T figured this out. They probably realized that no amount of FCC and regulatory legal battling will every completely eliminate their monopoly control of the local loop. T bypassed them. They have their own plant and require little cooperation with the Bells to determine their future business.