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Technology Stocks : George Gilder - Forbes ASAP -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: stantheman who wrote (1492)	5/8/1999 10:47:00 AM
From: Frank A. Coluccio	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 5853

If there's a case to be made concerning a bandwidth "glut" it could have been better made emphasizing that many of the new carriers which the authors spoke about are still putting in wares that are fast becoming obsolete. Thus, creating the wrong kind of bandwidth. Access to that bandwidth is consequently restricted, or circuitous to get to, at best. To that extent I'd agree with them. But not from the standpoint of pent up demand for open bandwidth, despite its usual lag in eventual delivery, after new access methods are enabled. But once unleashed, it becomes very scarce once again, with a vengeance. As I've stated on these boards in the past, a large problem remains that of the port, access to the port, or lack thereof, and not the larger channels of the cloud. Although the latter needs to be constantly widened, as well. And despite the move to network stupidity, some levels of orchestration must still be exercised, even if only edgewise [pun intended], in order to guarantee stupidity the chance to thrive. Of course, the bulk of these problems center on individual carriers' sovereignty and differing religious persuasions when it comes to technological and administrative practices. The latter manifestations contribute to what I would simply characterize as uncoordinated and disjointed initiatives, resulting in polyfurcated (by various rules of measure) islands of connectivity. Which excesses, incidentally, will be mitigated (i.e., the b-w will be used) upon consolidations and rollups, which is the primary reason for most of the startups' missions, in the first place. Granted, this doesn't meet with what a networking purist would plan for, but a fact of life, nonetheless. It does, however, fit the game plans as laid out by venture capitalists. And that's okay, too. However, these square-hole-round-peg-triangular-track exercises are in many ways still ill advised, since they have the effect of stranding bandwidth. [No pun intended.] But they do not represent a glut from the overall demand perspective. The bandwidth, instead, is simply not portable. Also, it could be argured that bandwidth is like the proverbial tree in the forest. It's not, unless it's used. As Bob Annunziata said, recently, while gesturing his right thumb and pointer finger one micron apart (paraphrasing him from an interview on a CNBC broadcast immediately following his joining GBLX), "No matter how much fiber we've put in in the past, users have always used every last bit of bandwidth we've offered to them..." But you've first got to make that bandwidth accessible and commutable. It has to be portable, in other words. The authors' time might have been better spent if they had focused on those attributes of the current buildouts, instead.