DSL Prime News Briefs

DSL industry news from around the world.

by Dave Burstein of DSL Prime and Future of TV [September 11, 2006]

E-mail

• "Hi Dave, I work on the Merrill Lynch telecom equipment team and was wondering if you could add me to your DSL prime distribution list. A colleague pointed it out to as being a great resource. Many thanks, hope to meet you at our annual conference next year." The response DSL Prime gets from Wall Street continues to astonish me, and I repeat my reminder that I'm not looking at the same issues that drive stock prices.
  
  
• "Off to France... Hi, a response to your mail might be delayed. I'll be back from holidays on September 25th." When I got that note early in September, I again envied the European vacation time.
  
  
• "I have some concerns about Marvell and their 'growth'. This is either very good management and integration similar to the Cisco acquisition era or [something less attractive]. As far as I know, Marvell's markets are highly competitive and not prone to excessive profits so I wonder where the money to buy companies comes from and how long they may be able to keep it up." A good question I have no information on the company's underlying finances. All I do know is that Marvell has hired some excellent DSL engineers.
  
  
• "This is to safeguard customers and is in no way influenced by call usage patterns as you suggest," was the pr person's comment when I suggested his company policy was influenced by how much they earned on different customers. I shouldn't have replied "I also believe in the tooth fairy," however.

Briefs

• French fiber gear maker Ekinops sees opportunity in the many older DSLAMs stilling in the field. CEO Didier Bredy believes Ekinops' ability to handle both today's Gig-E and the older ATM will prove a major advantage.
  
  
• 3.8 million of Taiwan's 7.3 million homes take ADSL, according to Chunghwa. Subscriber growth is down from about 200,000 to 100,000 per quarter, but upgrades to higher speeds and fiber are in the works. Add approximately 700,000 cable modem customers (Point Topic figure), and 62 percent of Taiwanese homes have broadband.
  
  
• Sources in India confirm that AT&T is moving even more software jobs abroad.

Press

• Martin Geddes thinks differently, posting Backhanded Business, "Why do operators call the difference between the point-of-sale retail price of a handset and its wholesale cost a subsidy? After all, the users are clearly paying for the whole thing. Indeed, it looks more like a covert hire-purchase agreement that avoids all the relevant laws by pretending that all the payments are really for mobile service, not hardware. … Furthermore, a subsidy implies you get nothing in return. In reality, the operator gets considerable control over the handset design and distribution, enabling them to cut off escape routes round operator toll gates, such as Bluetooth transfer of pictures. Perhaps many operators are really primarily retailers and finance companies, and the network is an unfortunate capital-draining side business? But then again, how would we ever know …"

People

• Alex Salkever at Business Week was one of the best telecom reporters, and now is bringing his earnestness and capacity for research to creating www.hawaiirama.com, with reviews of little walked beaches and other surprises about the Islands. Bill Kennard should buy him a dinner at La Mer.
  
  
• For job ads, visit the DSL Prime website.

Wall Street

• China Netcom has three quarters of a billion dollars in accounts payable over 180 days. I believe this is one of a group of accommodations from suppliers that CT and CN use to stabilize earnings and cash flow. I believe in some cases suppliers also maintain goods as "inventory" that have delivered to Chinese telcos and installed, delaying the billing. Besides various rumors, I've seen traces of such practices in the financial statements of some suppliers. This adds enormous to the volatility of Chinese equipment suppliers, of course, but seems to be an expected part of some relationships.

Copyright 2006 Dave Burstein.
The DSL Prime Newsletter is reprinted with permission.

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