GigaOM

Scott Moritz of TheStreet.com points out that the other Scott, Juniper Networks CEO Scott Kirens has been selling stock at the end of every quarter like clockwork. Apparently, he has sold nearly $37.8 million of his stock this year, Moritz points out. Since November 2002 he has sold nearly $68.8 million from stock sales. Though he has sold 4 million shares, there is another 12 million to go. Actually given the length of time he has been selling, one cannot read anything ulterior into this. “I’d say, talk to my wife, because I sell the same number of shares every quarter in a pattern and will continue to do that … that is a promise I made to her,” Kriens said during a chat with CNBC.

A couple of days after suing Lucent, Alcatel and Cisco, Telcordia Technologies is now in the process of being sold, according to investment banking rag, The Daily Deal. The daily says JP Morgan is handling the auction process and expects to get about $1 billion to $2 billion for the software company.

Like all parts of Bell System, Telcordia has fallen on hardtimes. Telcordia, previously known as Bellcore, the research unit for the Baby Bells after AT&T Corp.’s breakup in 1984 was sold to Science Applications International Corp. in 1997 and renamed it in 1999. This is a great company, but has seen its revenues slow down largely due to the telecom slowdown.
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At the first blush you could look at the SBC second quarter numbers and say, hmmmm!! they have finally played a winning hand, thanks largely in part to regulators showing them the hand. SBC upped its guidance on its traditional wireline revenue due to recent changes in the regulatory environment and cut the line loss as well. Even video reselling is off to a nice start as an addition to the communications bundle.

The highlight of their quarter, in my opinion was the continuing strength of their DSL business. SBC’s net gain in DSL lines totaled 315,000 in the second quarter. At the end of the quarter, SBC had 4.3 million DSL lines in service, up 54 percent over the past year.

But the real stinker is that the company’s Cingular division is in a bit of a tailspin. Year-over-year, the average revenue per user is down, and the total revenue growth is not increasing quickly enough, up around seven percent. Rest of the industry is growing at a double digit rate. The GSM migration may be cost exhaustive and the risks involved with AT&T merger are quite high as well.

Good lord! It has been an awfully busy day in the telecom world. Between conferences, earnings calls and the AT&T bombshell, I was not ready for another stink bomb today. Even a hard nosed cynic like moi does have his limits. (Well Boston is losing so that makes me happy!) Anyway just as the day was ending, here come news that Senate is allowing states to tax VoIP services. As Stuart “Sportscenter” Scott would say: what dawg? Yup you heard it right.
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Karl Bode, the man behind Broadband Reports stripes Verizon’s FTTP farce:

By putting a name and price-tag on a service most customers won’t see for many years, this Verizon press release has the mainstream presses’ hearts all a-flutter with the possibilities of “fiber races” and other such broadband revolutions. If you’ve paid attention, you know these tease announcements (made every few years for decades now) have one goal in mind: keeping the regulatory dogs at bay. As of 2003 however, only 39,000 US homes were connected to fiber lines, and the bells still couldn’t deliver so much as a single episode of Matlock. It’s now 2004, and once again a single press release has the press thrilled, excited, and amazed at the possibilities of inexpensive and incredibly fast 15 & 30Mbps fiber connections.

Tellabs Calm Over AFC Hiccup: “We are aware of all the developments at AFC, and we have had no surprises, but I can’t speculate on what will happen between AFC and Verizon between now and the closing [of the acquisition], which is due very soon,” Krish Prabhu, CEO of Tellabs. Also, FTTP math doesn’t add-up.

Microsoft is giving away $32 billion in special dividend, or about $3 a share. Funny that kind of news should have bumped up the price a little but, but Microsoft gains are marginal today. I would say, isn’t it the day you buy the share for $3 discount. Just wondering out loud. Or is the market saying well even with a $3 discount, the future of this company is flat!

Yesterday the big news was Verizon’s big plan to expand its fiber-to-the-home experiment to newer markets. The Eastern Bell promised mega-bandwidth for a few dollars. If that is the case, then things should be looking good for their primary FTTP gear supplier, Advanced Fibre Communications, right? Wrong, for after the market close, AFC announced a disastrous quarter.

“Our revenues came in somewhat lighter than we had anticipated,” said John Schofield, chairman, president and chief executive officer at AFC. “This was primarily due to a supply constraint of a key component that impacted FTTP shipments which we expect to be resolved in the current quarter.” This is a case of classic double speak. I will translate it for you: [a] Verizon is not deploying FTTP as quickly as they would like us to believe or [b] that AFC’s gear does not work. Which one is it I don’t know.

Phil Harvey over at Light Reading (why doesn’t he write more often) does some number crunching and comes up with this:

For, even if a full one third of the residents in Keller subscribe to Verizon’s FTTP network, the carrier’s network will have cost it about $1,360 per customer served. Supposing one third of Keller’s population does subscribe to FTTP services at the $45 monthly rate, Verizon would take about two-and-a-half years to make its money back.