Contents
1. VertiNews.com Launched
2. Telecommunications -- II

1. VertiNews.com Launched... Last week VertiNews.com publicly unveiled its commercial real estate news web site and e-mail service. You can sign up for free access for 30 days. After that a subscription is $100 per month. Aimed at the corporate and institutional markets, e.g., REITs, securities firms and pension advisors, VertiNews provides a range of filters to tailor news to your specific interest. For example, you can select stories by Sector, Subject, Company, City, State, Story Type and Valuation. News Alerts and Urgent News are delivered as e-mail links back to the stories posted at the VertiNews.com's web site. Commercial real estate news is the first service of VertiNews.com, which will specialize in the delivery of news and research information for sharply defined industry and professional markets... Check it out. In the future, the delivery of e-news will be a vital part of your personal knowledge base.

2. Telecommunicationss -- II... The August 2 Dispatch on telecommunications generated many interesting e-mails... Regarding "forced access" issues, Gerry Lederer of BOMA says that over 4,000 people have downloaded the "FCC's Notice of Rule Making" at BOMA's site. Go to the BOMA home page and click the "Download Files" hyperlink. Then click on the "Download the FCC NPRM on Forced Access" link. Actually you're launching the document in Adobe Acrobat, but it's a 63-page document. So that may take some time. The direct link is:

http://www.boma.org/download.htm

 I've posted two longer e-mails in the new Telecommunications area of PikeNet's Web Resources (left-hand column on home page). Ed Schnieders with Baker Commercial Realty Dallas, TX writes about telecommunications from a broker's perspective. Steve VanDette of CAS Management, Cleveland, OH, is a Teligent consultant.

Jerry Neitlich with IN/House Corporate Real Estate in Los Angeles recommends Pacific Bell's "A Building Owner's Guide to Telephone Cable," which outlines a landlord's responsibilities. I poked around Pacific Bell's web site, but couldn't find any reference to it.

Don Bartley with Colliers International in Portland, OR, writes, "Our office uses a 128K Frame Relay over phone line to connect to a VPN through MCI Worldcom. The Building itself does not offer communications services. We have four service providers, offering low to high speed wire, cable, fiber, and dish technology. The Service Providers lease space, run cable, and sell their services to other tenants. This building was built in the '60's, and the owners do not consider it part of their mission to be providing communications services. So free enterprise reigns."

Scott McMillan writes "Five minutes before reading your recent Dispatch I e-mailed my associates informing them about a local apartment management company that is in the process of providing all of its apartments with ISDN access. The local cable company that had wired and operated in all of these apartments was upset but didn't have the ability to do anything about it because their 'exclusivity' agreement that they had in place with the City had expired. The principals in the ownership of the apartment complex and in the management company have an ownership interest in the 'new' ISDN company."

Naturally a number of vendors replied... Anthony G. Bontrager, Director of Real Estate for Advanced Radio Telecom Corp. (ART), wrote that "ART provides wireless fiber optic and internet data services over a 100 Mbps IP-based network. Our networks are installed on the West Coast currently, and we will be expanding into the top 40 MSA's over the next 3 years via our 38Ghz license spectrum."

BTW (computer lingo for "by the way"), nobody has yet claimed to provide unbiased telecom counsel. Any suggestions? Send e-mail to me at , and I'll report more in future Dispatches.

--Peter