By: T. Bruce Tober                 No 5 - 1999	Page:
	3. Access companies, the PTOs (Postal Telecommunications Operators) have an obvious desire to remain the pre-eminent providers in the country. "And they have a wide choice as to what they can do and provide and how they can provide it. They can run a range of technologies over their copper. They can (and in cases like Deutsche Telekom, they do) buy cable TV companies and provide cable modems. But their problem is they can be very bureaucratic and that means decision making is very formalized. The more complex a situation, therefore, the harder it is for them to do anything and so they do nothing." Full name: William Webb Age: 31 Lives where: Basingstoke, UK Occupation: Technical marketing manager, Motorola, UK Website: www.mot.com     4. Economies of scale is the downfall of manufacturers in this situation. "In order to get the sort of quantities that we would start to look at customized chips and integrating all the components onto a circuit board, we need to be at least at the level of a million units per year. Too far below that and you can't really do much to push costs down." In the WLL market, he said, there are estimated to be only about 2 million lines installed worldwide, "and that's split among some ten manufacturers."