At 06:29 PM 10/15/99 -0400, Lon R. Stockton, Jr. wrote:

In other words, it's my theory that 3com is now more interested in big telcos. Integrating the TC and phone switches and stuff like putting ADSL and traditional dialup in the CO. $Billions is an understatement

Bingo. Last year, our 3com rep told us that if they sold one contract to a single <unnamed> telco that they were working with, the sale would constitute as many ports as they have sold in their history to date.. I doubt the deal ever happened though.. During the 80's recession, our local government spent millions trying to lure McDonald Douglas into building a new factory at our city. We lost the 'beauty contest' hosted by a dozen cities. In fact, the new factory was never built at all. What about the little guy? The ones who really keep the city going? Where is our tax abatement? and other incentives? If only they had spend their efforts and money in a way that would have really helped people in our area...

My only wish is that I didn't pick up on this earlier....

I have no regrets.. x2 was a big deal in our area (we certainly helped) and being the first 56k provider in our area was a big win for us. USR made that happen.. I liked USR.. It's 3com that I feel ill about. USR designed nearly all the hardware before the merger. It's been nearly 2 years now.. What has 3com created or added to the mix to make it a good merger? OSPF? great! only took 3-4 years.. Where is the SS7 gateway? higher density modems per DSP? VoIP? cool PPC code features and all that jazz? Aren't 2 of the 3 PPC's on the board doing nothing? Do we use 3com switches or routers? no we use cisco, foundry, etc.. I just don't see the overall purpose/benefit of the merger.. Perhaps it's not only about humongous telcos on the one side, but about CPE on the other.. something we buy very little of.. and we are stuck in the middle...

The other saving grace is this mailing list, and the handful of 3com people that populate it. I actually hesitate in bashing 3com on here because the 3com people that actually see it aren't the problem, and they're more deserving of praise rather than seeing stuff that'll just alienate them more and make 'em think I'm an ingrate.

agreed. Allen - To unsubscribe to usr-tc, send an email to "majordomo@xmission.com" with "unsubscribe usr-tc" in the body of the message. For information on digests or retrieving files and old messages send "help" to the same address. Do not use quotes in your message.