Sprint's New ION products

Wed Jun 3 17:07:04 UTC 1998

At 10:46 AM 6/3/98 , kbrown at primelink.com wrote:
[...]
>Has anyone heard any additional information or have any more insight into
>this announcement?  I am curious how this might affect the remainder of the
>industry.
>
>Kevin Brown
>Huber & Associates, Inc.
>Networking Technologies
>kbrown at primelink.com
>http://www.primelink.com/haa/lanwan
>

I listened to Sprint's press conference yesterday.  I came away with a few
solid observations/facts:

1) The press conference was an hour-long commercial for ION.
2) The service will be based on an all-ATM network, doing voice over ATM,
and IP over ATM.
3) It will be at least a year before ION is deployed to residential customers.
4) It isn't clear that Sprint knows how to solve the last mile problem in
the face of RBOC stonewalling.

Finally, in the interest of historical perspective, I would like to point
out that, if dramatic carrier announcements are to be believed, by today
most everyone in the country should be able to order AT&T local service
deployed over a 128 Kbps wireless link, and most people in U.S. West
territory should be able to buy DSL-based Internet access for $40/month.
These things have a way of not going as planned.

-----------
Peter U. Leppik, Senior Research Associate
Dain Rauscher Wessels, Equity Capital Markets

pleppik at dainrauscher.com

http://www.dainrauscher.com/