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Date: Monday, November 15, 1999, 4:46 PM -0500
From: Faulkner Information Services <flash@faulkner.com>
To: ???
Subject: Faulkner Com-Flash 11/15/99 (Part 1 of 3)

FAULKNER com-flash
November 15, 1998

===========================================================================
===== Top Story

	 Mannesmann rejected a $110 billion all-stock bid presented by Vodafone
AirTouch. It is likely that Vodafone will attempt to mount a hostile
takeover, which would be the largest ever attempted. Mannesmann could turn
to a white knight to help it fend off the unwanted bid. A number of telecoms
might consider such a deal, including France Telecom, SBC Communications,
BT, or MCI WorldCom.

===========================================================================
===== Agreements/Joint Ventures
	 Open Market and Concord EFS reported that Concord adopted Open Market's
Transact and ShopSite products to enable its on-line commerce services. The
system can support thousands of merchants processing millions of
transactions. The agreement calls for Open Market to develop a custom
payment gateway for Concord, for both front and back end processing
services. Transcend, a policy-based networking service for e-business
	 applications, will be developed by 3Com and IPHighway. This suite of
policy management services for carriers, enterprise customers, and service
providers is slated for release by the second quarter of 2000.
	 BEA Systems and New Era of Networks formed an agreement to incorporate
	 NEON technology into the BEA eLink e-commerce integration suite. BEA has
licensed NEONRules and NEONFormatter software to extend BEA's E-Commerce
Transaction Platform. BEA expects its NEON-based technology to be available
in BEA eLink by mid-year 2000.
	 NDS for NT from Novell will be deployed by BT to 90,000 users across the
UK. The initial contract calls for 50,000 licenses of NDS for NT to be
deployed immediately. The contract will be extended to 90,000 by May 2000,
creating the largest NDS for NT site in the world.
	 Cable & Wireless HKT formed a joint venture with Star TV. The venture,
60-percent owned by C&W HKT, aims to bring multimedia services via
television and computer to Asia.
	 A joint initiative to extend unified communications services to the
wireless market was formed by Cisco Systems and Software.com, a developer of
carrier-scale Internet infrastructure applications.
	 General Motors unveiled plans for an e-commerce venture with Commerce One
through which it will link its suppliers, dealers, and other businesses.
General Motors will create GM MarketSite, which will be a "virtual
marketplace" for products, raw materials, parts, and services. Commerce One
intends to issue GM warrants to purchase up to 4.8 million shares of
Commerce One common stock after mutually agreed-to revenue targets are met.
	 A strategic alliance was formed by Ericsson and Extreme Networks to target
multi-billion dollar voice and data convergence market. The two will provide
networking solutions for Enterprise customers and NSPs, incorporating
Extreme Networks' award-winning Summit and BlackDiamond switching products
to Ericsson's worldwide voice-data customer base.
	 GTE and Crown Castle International agreed to form a joint venture company
that will own, operate, and leasing space on GTE's existing network of
communications towers. Crown Castle and GTE also have agreed to enter into a
five-year, 500-tower, build-to-suit agreement. The transaction, in which GTE
will contribute real estate and associated integral equipment, including
approximately 2300 existing towers, is valued at about $900 million.
	 J.D. Edwards & Company and BMC Software reported the availability of the
OneWorld Knowledge Module (KM) for PATROL from J.D. Edwards, which was
developed through J.D. Edwards' role in BMC's PATROLMARK program.
	 An agreement was signed between nFront and CheckFree that will allow
electronic bills to be presented to a number of Internet banking users. When
requested by consumers, billers will deliver the specified consumer bills
electronically to nFront client banks via CheckFree.
	 Tivoli Systems and Nortel Networks signed an agreement to embed the Tivoli
Management Agent into Nortel Networks' Enterprise Edge. Enterprise Edge
features native installation of the Tivoli Management Agent, which enables
service providers and distribution partners to proactively optimize system
performance and deliver new services.

Broadband/Cable Networking
	 CableLabs released five OpenCable 1.0 interim specifications:
Unidirectional Functional Requirements; Bi-directional Functional
Requirements; Unidirectional Terminal Requirements; OpenCable Network
Interface; and Host-POD Interface. The specifications are meant to be
guidelines for suppliers on how to build products compatible with the
OpenCable architecture for digital video systems, which will interoperate
across a variety of independent cable systems.
	 ADSL Internet access was launched by France Telecom in parts of Paris as
well as Issy-les-Moulineaux, Neuilly-sur-Seine and Vanves. The service,
called Netissimo, is available in at downstream speeds of 500K bps and 1M
bps and upstream at 128K bps and 256K bps.
	 A wholesale ATM services was launched by Global Crossing, offering carrier
customers access to a network that can support high-bandwidth applications.
The ATM, which carriers traffic at 2.5G bps over DWDM, can offer multiple
applications such as data, Internet, voice, and video over a single network.
	 Initiating a quantum leap forward in network throughput, Lucent
Technologies announced the WaveStar LamdaRouter. The 10T-bps switch router
provides 256 channels of voice, data, or video traffic over either SONET or
OC/STM at 40G-bps per channel. The total throughput is 10 times that of the
highest current router rates and is achieved through the use of microscopic
mirrors. The LamdaRouter will provide meshed all-optical networking
possibilities to provide savings of up to 25 percent in operational costs.
	 The throughput rates were achieved by operational savings of up to 16
percent over electrical switches by eliminating the need to translate the
photonic traffic into electrical form. The big drawback to the deployment of
the product is the lack of corresponding equipment deployed in the public
Internet. As is occurring on a more frequent basis today, connection points
become the bottleneck for high-speed traffic. To take full advantage of
10T-bps routing the entire Internet infrastructure will have to be upgraded.
Point-to-point traffic over a single backbone network will be the only area
where true terabit+ routing can be achieved at this time.
	 In addition, critics call the LamdaRouter little more than vaporware due
	 to the long lead time from announcement to delivery. Lucent expects to
deliver the product to select customers in July 2000, but the router will
not be commercially available until December 2000. If it achieves the
throughput that it claims, it could push Lucent to the forefront of the
backbone routing market, a segment dominated by Cisco Systems.



	 The Major Broadcasting Corporation (MBC) Network signed an affiliation
agreement with AT&T Broadband & Internet Services' (AT&T BIS) subsidiary,
Satellite Services. The agreement gives analog and digital carriage rights
and creates the opportunity for AT&T BIS to offer its potential audience to
MBC Network.
	 Qwest and US WEST plan to offer voice and data services, including DLS
technology, long distance, and e-commerce applications, to small and
medium-sized businesses in Sacramento in early 2000. The companies' proposed
merger is being voted on by shareholders this week.
	 SBC Communications will use Advanced Fibre Communications, Alcatel, Lucent
Technologies, Newbridge Networks, Nortel Networks, and Siecor as the primary
suppliers for its $6 billion Internet project, Project Pronto. SBC expects
to provide 80 percent of its customers with Project Pronto services by the
end of 2002.
	 In other news, SBC became the first company to surpass 100,000 DSL service
customers.
Also, SBC contracted with Prodigy Communications to provide SBC's DSL
service to Prodigy consumer and business Internet customer in SBC's DSL
markets.

Carriers and Carrier Services
	 In an effort to attract mid-sized business customers, AT&T will offer a
package of integrated services via the "AT&T Business Network." The services
include long distance, local, international, wireless, data, and Internet
services. Under the terms of a single contract, each businesses would be
charged an annual fee ranging from $60,000 to $5 million for the services.
	 Bell Atlantic Video is offering a service to Boston residents, who
subscribe to DIRECTV programming from Bell Atlantic. The service uses Caller
ID service to display the number of an incoming call on the television
screen. Concert, a global joint venture, took control of its operations
	 from its parents, AT&T and BT. Concert cleared the last regulatory
barrier by receiving FCC approval. The joint venture is expected to garner
$10 billion in revenue annually.
	 $500 million in unbundled network elements (UNEs) will be purchased by
Network One from BellSouth. The UNEs combinations will allow the provision
of local phone service throughout the Southwest.
	 Sprint entered New York's local phone market by offering local service in
New York City, Long Island, Albany, Buffalo, and Syracuse. Local service can
be bundled with long distance in the main plan offering.

Electronic Commerce
	 BEA Systems introduced several new BEA eLink products designed to
	 integrate enterprise processes and applications within businesses and
across the Web for business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce. The BEA eLink
product family now has several new offerings, including BEA eLink Data
Integration options that translate diverse data models used by different
applications and BEA eLink Business Process options that extend BEA eLink's
environment to provide distributed and automated execution of business
processes.
	 Cisco Systems introduced new classification, policy, and intelligent
network service solutions to deploy e-business applications. These new
products support the Cisco Content Networking initiative.


	 The Commerce One XML Development Kit (XDK) 1.0 was introduced by Commerce
One. The XDK is claimed as the world's first XML schema toolkit that enables
the industry-wide creation of XML-based business documents and applications.
	 Harbinger unveiled its objectives for 2000 and financial goals for its key
e-commerce lines of business. Harbinger has identified four key priorities,
including increasing market awareness as the leading business-to-business
E-Commerce solutions provider; capitalizing on harbinger.net's position as
the leading portal for mission-critical business-to-business E-Commerce;
completing the conversion of the Company's 40,000 customers to IP-based
connectivity; and maintaining operational excellence throughout Harbinger.
	 The Enterprise Information Portal was introduced by IBM. IBM calls the
product the first step of its company wide software strategy designed to
help corporations leverage the growing amount of information supporting
e-business applications. The IBM Enterprise Information Portal is designed
to allow users to access, search, integrate, and manage a wide variety of
information sources.
	 The e-content company, a division of Interleaf released e-Learn, a toolkit
that lets companies automate training processes by creating, managing, and
dynamically assembling training materials in a customized fashion.

Financial News
	 For the third quarter of 1999, Alcatel reported a nine percent increase in
net sales to EUR 5261 million from EUR 4808 million in 1998. Net income was
EUR 83 million, or 0.44 per diluted share, compared to a net loss of EUR 9
million, or a per share loss of 0.05.
	 Arch Communications Group reported a net revenue increase of 102 percent
	 to $195.7 million for the third quarter 1999. The company's earnings were
$65.5 million, an increase of 83 percent.
	 Bell Atlantic and PaeTec Communications settled their compensation dispute
over payment for Internet traffic in a series of agreements that establish
new intercarrier compensation rates for local and Internet traffic in 10
East Coast States and the District of Columbia.
	 For the third quarter, BT reported revenues increased 21 percent over
results for the same quarter in 1998 to 5.3 billion pounds. Net income was a
gain of 869 million pounds, a per-share gain of 9.1 pence, compared to a net
gain of 857 million pounds, or 8.8 pence gain per share.
	 For the third quarter of 1999, Cablevision Systems' operating cash flow
	 was $204 million, before year 2000 expenses. Net loss was $178.1 million,
or $1.17 per diluted share, compared to a loss of $113.6 million, or of
$0.75 per diluted share. The company will begin listing its Class A common
stock on the New York Stock Exchange on December 7, under the ticker symbol
CVC. 400,000 additional common shares were acquired by Centigram
	 Communications in InfoInterActive. Centigram owned 1,075,000 Special
Warrants of InfoInterActive prior to this transaction.
	 The lead managers for Charter Communications' IPO exercised their option
	 to purchase an additional 25,500,000 shares to cover over-allotments on
behalf of the underwriters. The gross proceeds, totalling more than $3.7
billion for the company, will be used to finance acquisitions.
	 For the third quarter of 1999, Comcast reported consolidated revenues of
$1.525 billion, up 23.2 percent from $1.238 billion in the same quarter of
1998. Net income was $375.1 million, or $0.07 per diluted share, compared to
$714 million, or $0.89 per diluted share.
	 Electric Lightwave announced revenues for the third quarter increased 89
percent over results for the same period a year ago to $48.6 million. Net
loss was $30.4 million, or a loss of $0.61 per share, compared to a loss of
$18.4 million, a per-share loss of $0.37.
	 For the third quarter, EQUANT announced total revenues increased 49
	 percent to $278.9 million. Revenue increase was experienced in each of
the company's four business divisions. Net loss for the quarter was $10.4
million, a per-share loss of $0.05, compared to a loss of $29.8 million, or
$0.15 per share.
	 Ericsson reported sales of SEK 49.2 billion, an increase of 14 percent
	 over last year's figures. The company's income before taxes decreased 19
percent to SEK 3.6 billion and earnings per share were SEK 1.33.
	 For the third quarter, Facilicom reported that revenues increased 85
percent to $124.1 million. Total operating expenses grew 93 percent to $31.4
million. Net loss was $22.6 million, compared to a loss of $14.1 million.
Total billed minutes increased 106 percent to 651.8 million, while the
average revenue per billed minute slipped 11 percent to $0.19.
	 Hughes Electronics Corporation, the parent company of Hughes Network
Systems, Hughes Space & Communications, PanAmSat, DirecTV, and Spaceway
reported revenues of $1.99 billion for the third quarter 1999, up 31.5
percent from third quarter 1998 figures. Net loss was reported at $29.6
million, or a loss of $0.13 per share, compared to net income of $42.9
million, or $0.11 per share.
	 For the third quarter, Intermedia Communications announced that revenues
increased 22 percent to $234.7 million. Net loss was $132.8 million, a loss
of $3.08 per share, compared to a loss of $85.9 million, a loss of $2.48 per
share.
	 The Japanese Ministry of Finance will sell 952,000 shares in NTT for 1.666
million yen ($15,668) per share. Of the total number of shares being
offered, 730,000 will be sold only within Japan, while 90,000 are slated for
sale in the US, and the remainder will be sold elsewhere in the world. The
sale is expected to net Japan 1.56 trillion yen ($14.7 billion).
	 For the third quarter, Jones Intercable's revenues were $136.1 million, up
2.3 percent from $133 million in 1998. Net loss was $49.5 million, a
per-share loss of $1.18, compared to a net loss of $14.4 million, or a loss
of $0.35 per share.
	 For the third quarter ending September 30, 1999, MediaOne reported
consolidated revenues of $675 million, up from $626 million in the same
quarter of 1998. Net income increased to $148 million, or $0.18 per diluted
common share, compared to a loss of $184 million, or a loss of $0.32 per
diluted common share. The company increased its telephone subscribers 62
percent to 42,000 during the quarter.
	 For the second quarter of its fiscal 2000, ended September 24, 1999, Mitel
reported an increase in revenue from continuing operations to $348.8
million, up from $347.6 million a year ago. Net income for the period was
$12.5 million, or $0.10 per share, after deduction of amortization of
intangibles totaling $15.2 million. Net income in the second quarter of
fiscal 1999 was $12.8 million, or $0.10 per share.
	 NetSpeak's net revenues for the third quarter 1999 were $2.0 million up
	 150 percent from figures reported in the third quarter of 1998. Net loss
was $2.5 million, or $0.19 per share, as compared to $4.4 million, or $0.35
per share, in the third quarter of 1998.
	 For its fiscal year 2000 second quarter, Newbridge Networks reported that
revenues are expected to be approximately $480 million, nearly half of what
analysts originally predicted for the company. Earnings are expected to be
between $0.08 and $0.10 cents per share, compared to the $0.20 per share
reported last year. Stagnant revenues in North America caused the company's
Chief Operating Officer Alan Lutz, who was working to improve sales in that
region, to resign. Pearse Flynn, Newbridge's Executive Vice President and
General Manager for Africa, Europe, and the Middle East, was given Lutz's
position.
Faulkner Information Service
Flash Account
flash@faulkner.com
114 Cooper Center
Pennsauken, N.J. 08109
(609) 662 2070
http://www.faulkner.com



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