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

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (3824)	5/20/1999 12:13:00 PM
From: Frank A. Coluccio	Respond to of 12823

Thanks, Ken. Let's look into this further and examine the implications. I would begin by first asking Denver Techie and WTC for their takes on the article. [At first I read into this something else, btw, in case you happened to catch my initial reply, which I quickly edited upon rereading.] FAC

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (3824)	5/20/1999 1:23:00 PM
From: Sam Citron	Respond to of 12823

AT&T is testing a technology that will free it from having to install special batteries on the home of each customer who subscribes to its new package of service. [from the article you cited] Ken, Interesting article. I was not aware that cable modems normally required battery installations on premises or that such batteries were necessary for other advanced services that ATT was cooking up. I guess I had just figured that hooking the device up to standard power grid via AC cable would be considered sufficient. Are they now atempting to make residential broadband more robust than the standard AC power grid, just as telephone connections are more reliable than local power connections? If so, they are signalling that they are planning to take broadband to an entirely new level and quality of service. Sam

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (3824)	5/20/1999 3:14:00 PM
From: DenverTechie	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 12823

I love these kinds of articles. I really do. They try to sum up in a few sentences an entire architecture approach and wax philosophical about the long term implications for world peace that could result. Seriously, though, the 50 to 75 homes passed node is nothing new. It has been studied, modeled and even built previously in other places. Just never in such a large location as Salt Lake. In a nutshell, the low homes passed count per node does increase reliability substantially, also the bandwidth that can be delivered for cable modems and telephone. It is an architecture known in the industry as "fiber deep" and has not been built too often due to the much higher cost to go fiber deep. Is there revenue that will flow to justify the higher cost? Maybe yes, if you can sell digital cable, telephone and high speed access in a bundle to a high penetration rate in the small size node. I'd also like to clarify the need for the power coming from a "central source". That is not for the cable modems' high speed access. It is strictly for the local telephone. We've been over this before. Powering for telephone is one of the great dilemmas of cable telephone. This article is saying they are doing away with local battery power at each home. The other "central source" has typically been the power supply located at each node. This is NOT the same as the central power that your local telephone company uses at its Central Office. The node power supplies are distributed throughout the network and provided with generator or battery backup at each fiber node in case the commercial power goes out. Now, if ATA&T has figured out a way to power this network "just like the traditional phone network does" they would have to have retrofitted the entire network in Salt Lake and set up a large power distribution center at each headend. That has not happened to my knowledge. Also, fiber will not carry power, so there would have to be a cable conducting power along with the fiber to all locations. An alternative would be a new kind of fiber cable that has power conductors built into it. That is possible, but I don't think one has been approved by the NESC (National Electric Safety Code)at this time (SNET tried this approach a while back and it was deemed out of code and a safety hazard). So my take on the article is give them about B-. They got a lot of it right, but seem confused on the powering issue. Conclusion: the fiber deep architecture they are testing is a good one if you can afford it, and the move away from home powered cable telephony is also a good choice.