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<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">----- Original Message ----- </DIV>
<DIV
style="BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; FONT: 10pt arial; font-color: black"><B>From:</B>
<A title=mmc@internode.com.au href="mailto:mmc@internode.com.au">Matthew
Moyle-Croft</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>To:</B> <A title=technical@halenet.com.au
href="mailto:technical@halenet.com.au">lists</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Cc:</B> <A title=ausnog@ausnog.net
href="mailto:ausnog@ausnog.net">ausnog@ausnog.net</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Sent:</B> Saturday, April 11, 2009 11:35
AM</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Subject:</B> Re: [AusNOG] Aust Govt will
build National Broadband Network, no company will be awarded the tender.</DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>
<DIV>Tim,<BR>Your emails seem to be based around the idea you don't like the
idea of a fibre network and you're highlighting any risk regarding
them. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff size=2>Not at all. i am just
sharing some of my experience in deploying FTTH. I am very much in
favour of FTTH. In fact I have deployed it. My focus is that it
must be based on a business plan and the infrastructure should be installed
with good design. Because fibre is fragile and the equipment to locate
and repair faults is jolly expensive the design needs to address those risks.
(</FONT><FONT face=Arial size=2><FONT color=#0000ff>Prior planning prevents
piss poor performance). I have identified a number of ways to get it
underground without massive expense or using Telstra ducts. I am about
to test another method in the next month. </FONT></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2><FONT color=#0000ff></FONT></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2><FONT color=#0000ff>My other issue is that
governments are not good at achieving asset cost minimisation. For every
dollar that is spent a return needs to be recovered from the consumer, also
duplicating Telstras existing fibre network without a business case is dumb.
My other concern is that if this was such a good idea why hasn't optus, iinet
internode and others done it. From what I have worked out, it is because
the business case does not stack up and because the applications do not yet
exist in commercial form and or are available to consumers other than through
2or 3 providers. ie IPTV and on my second point foxtel. There is
one telco begining with t that has exclusive access to content which only 2
other companies can sell Optus Austar (and make a margin). There is no
reason that many of the existing offerings cannot be done over ADSL2, so why
strand commercially deployed networks with a taxpayer funded one before it is
needed. When it is needed and a business case exists it will happen.
</FONT> </FONT></DIV></BLOCKQUOTE>
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<DIV><BR><BR>Many countries around the world have significant aerial
infrastructure. US and Japan especially as markets I'm familiar
with. They have aerial Cu, Fibre and Coax. None of which, in
my discussions with various O/S telcos seem to worry them significantly in
terms of maintenance, risk etc. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff size=2>Speak to someone that maintains
them. Just because they are not worried, doesn't make it right.
From my experience in T half of the managers wouldn't know ship from
clay. You needed to talk to the 8 or so methods and practices
fellows. They do the research and make the process changes.
Do they have the same environmental concerns as we experience in
Oz. Of all the issues we face the issue that we humans cannot control is
weather. We can legislate and regulate against cowboys and idiots,
we can even take security steps to prevent such. In many areas aerial
may be a solution, but I very much doubt 70% of oz is in that
category. A robust FTTH network needs to provision all the end points at
the time of construction seal it and leave it alone, other than periodic
testing of reference fibres to identify degragation and schedule
repairs. By provisioning I am referring to connectorised entry points to
allow for customer connection by low skilled staff.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> <BR><BR>Verizon have said that the maintenance costs of their fibre
network (FiOS) (some above, some underground) are significantly less than Cu
and more reliable. </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2><FONT color=#0000ff>So it should be the fibre
network is how many years old and the copper is how old? All networks
maintenance costs increase with age, then there is the issue of fibre not
being affected by the issues that affect copper. If you read what
I wrote I am referring to storm, motor vehicles and servere events that will
cause wide spread damage on an infrequent basis. But they do happen
frequently especially in the summer months. </FONT></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV> They have developed significant technology around FTTP install
which makes it easy to do and not require as skilled people.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff size=2>They have developed connectorised
methods to reduce the need for skilled staff. Trees falling on cables
does not use connectorised methods for repair.</FONT></DIV><FONT face=Arial
size=2></FONT><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT>
<DIV><BR><BR>In SA there is significant amounts of aerial fibre from one
telco. </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff size=2>That is IEN cable not FTTH,
installed with few slice points and on major power routes that do not have
trees growing up through them like much of the distribution FTTH network
will. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV> The outages caused by fibre physical failure have been few and far
between. Certainly no more than I'd expect from underground cable, maybe
less due to the fact that people can see above electricity cables vs can't see
underground cables!</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff size=2>My experience would suggest that
tree damage would outnumber cut cables 10 to 1. </FONT><BR><BR>If
there are certain areas where the design of the electricity poles is so poor
that there are outages more than every month, then I'd hope the percentage
underground would include those areas. Most of the "backbone" will
be underground as it's going to be purchased from existing Telco installs or
swapped for </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>equitiy in the new company.</DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#0000ff>That will depend on the business plan. No one
will invest if there is no return</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><BR><BR>At the moment I don't see much wrong with what the government has
agreed to do. The only significant change would be to have a time
machine and undo the selling of Telstra in the manner it was in
1997.<BR><BR>The suggestion you make regarding repurchasing TLS and then using
it's profits to do fibre I think are ultimately fruitless as the cost is
ultimately going to be higher ($43b plus the $6b/year), take longer and not
deliver an additional network.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff size=2>I really do not know how you work
that out. Telstra already has the duct and pipe space and an extensive
fibre network. It will take many years to duplicate that and cost more
than $43 Bn. Most if not all RIM cabinets are within 4 Km of
customers houses. To convert RIM areas which cover upto 240 customers to
FTTH will take little to do. Yes some RIM cabinets do go upto 480
customers but they are in high density areas.</FONT></DIV><FONT face=Arial
color=#0000ff size=2></FONT></BLOCKQUOTE>
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face=Arial color=#0000ff size=2>Have you considered what will happen if
Telstra decides to build out their existing network? If so how will NBN
mk2 ever be viable and who will ba paying for the losses. NBN will
strand many of the ADSL deployments and the existing ADSL 2 providers will
have to come back to the pack and operate on minimal margins. I don't
see how that will be good for encouraging investment over the next 8
years. If someone can show me a business plan that says it will be
viable that also stands up to scrutiny then I will willingly eat me words
backwards forwards </FONT>
<DIV><BR><BR>It's certainly a valid point to ask about what other things could
be done for the $43b. It's the role of government to weigh these things
up. I guess the decision point is that GDP is likely to get a 0.5%
boost from FTTP but none from water projects.</DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff size=2>The bradfield scheme has already
shown that there will be a massive return. Some say 200,000
forrestry jobs in Queenland alone. Let alone the 1000's of jobs that are
being lost or are at loss becasue water buy backs etc. This
decision has nothing to do with return. It is about saving
face.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV> Water is primarily a state issue, </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff size=2>Not any more the states have agreed
for the feds to manage the murray darling water. The Bradfield scheme
would go a long way to solving the water problems of 4 states.
Tell me that would return more than 0.5 GDP. There are many
millions of dollars of investment that are stranded at present because of
water issues. More importantly many of the people that have water
licenses and are paying for allocations are not allowed to use
them.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV>so I guess they're doing what all Federal Govts do and leave the ugly
stuff to the states. <BR></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff size=2>Yes unless there is a photo shot in
in for them.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff size=2>I would be interested to hear from
some of the major shareholders of some of the larger ISP's about what their
thoughs are. But at the end of the day we need to see the devil in
the detail in the business plan which doesn't exist for all of
this. In the meantime it may discourage investment.</FONT></DIV><FONT
face=Arial size=2></FONT></BLOCKQUOTE>
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<DIV>Regards<BR> <BR>Tim</DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><BR>MMC<BR><BR><BR>lists wrote: </DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE cite=mid:2e4301c9b9f0$6624d7f0$6500a8c0@hal type="cite">
<META content="MSHTML 6.00.6000.16809" name=GENERATOR>
<DIV>----- Original Message ----- </DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr
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<DIV
style="BACKGROUND: rgb(228,228,228) 0% 50%; FONT: 10pt arial; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal"><B>From:</B>
<A title=mmc@internode.com.au href="mailto:mmc@internode.com.au"
moz-do-not-send="true">Matthew Moyle-Croft</A> <BR></DIV><BR>lists wrote:
<BLOCKQUOTE cite=mid:2dd401c9b996$68e6d100$6500a8c0@hal type="cite">
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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Last night I saw reference to 70% of the
network being on power poles and only 30% underground. emm I hope
they don't get bush fires, cyclones, cars running into poles, garbage
trucks pulling the cables down etc etc etc. <BR></FONT></DIV></BLOCKQUOTE>
<DIV>Does your electricity on power poles go out much because of
this? Mine doesn't. I think you're overblowing the
risk here. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2><FONT color=#0000ff>I don't, based on my
experience as a field manager for X and research I undertook as part
of a operations research degree I did into X's network performance fault
analysis as well as work I did as a state analyst. Are you saying
you don't have power black outs. If that is the case you are very
fortunate. I have 10 - 20 or more a year</FONT></FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> Does your Optus Cable/Foxtel go out? </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2><FONT color=#0000ff>I don't live in an area
that has cable. If it did exist here there would be 10 or 20 faults
per year. Believe it or not some areas are more prone to storm
damage than others. Hence why the design needs to reflect the
risk. </FONT></FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> I'll point out that undergrounding cable didn't stop the San
Jose vandalism last night! I've had more issues with water
getting into Telstra's Cu cables going to my house than overhead power
issues.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff size=2>You really should compare
apples with apples not oranges. The issue with the cable to your
house is not poor design, it is poor maintenance. My comments all relate
to design and the business plan</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> Heck, the water pipes in the street here crack three
times as often as the electricity has gone out due to someone doing
external aggression on power poles!</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2><FONT color=#0000ff>Different issue.
Water pipes break because of old age (rust), tree roots, soil cracking,
back hoe fade etc. Other than back hoe fade telephone cables are not
affected to the same extent by the other causes in the same way as water
pipes are not affected by electrolysis whereas telephone cables can
be.</FONT> </FONT><BR><BR>Overhead fibre/coax is extremely common
around the world. US/Japan especially. One of the reasons they
have many more last-mile networks than us is that they're not so precious
about this.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff size=2>1. They may not be, but your
customers are. Aerial is cheaper to install but costs more to
maintain in the long term. I do first in maintenance on
a major TV repeater, if the TV signal goes off or is degraded there
can be as many as 300 calls evey 30 minutes from a repeater that servers
50000 people. In fact when the olympics was on I was paid to sit and
baby sit a transmitter for 5 hours just in case something
happened.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff size=2>2. Customers seem to be
expecting quicker and quicker repair times as people rely on these systems
more and more they will require better and better reliability and repair
times. I am already seeing it, with residential customers asking for
compo if their service is down for more than a day.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff size=2>3. If you do not live in a city
then it is highly unlikely that there will be a maintenance
presence. It is not uncommon for telstra to not have a splicing van
within 4 hours of a lot of places. That is because it is rare for
something to get cut. I expect that will be the same for NBN mk2. As
a result of there not being a need on a regular basis there will not be to
many of these vehicles around period</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#0000ff><FONT face=Arial size=2>4. This brings me to the
mess that will happen when cyclones. bush fires etc etc
happen. A set of tools for a copper jointer cost sub $1000, it
doesn't matter if they get wet, dusty etc etc. An OTDR and a fusion
splicer cost $50k and they need to be kept dry clean etc. This
requires that the network be built in such a manner as to be protected
from the elements. Fibre is a very different animal to copper and
coax</FONT><BR></FONT><BR>Quite frankly most people have little
understanding or appreciation for external plant and street
furniture. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2><FONT color=#0000ff>That is true, but my
experience is extensive in that area, especially in copper and
fibre. The one thing about fibre is that it is not well suited to
frequent re entry. The fibre on power poles around australia is all
on very well maintained main transmission routes. With all the
greenies and the move to aerial bundled cables in street distribution the
same level of maintenance is unlikely /is not going to
continue. I was in Brisbane last week and the weather was wet
and windy. Energex had 6000 customers without power all day, as they
fixed some others were reported. This was predominantly due to trees
falling on power lines. This is quite common now. If that had
been fibre it would have taken a week to fix it, not same day. Then
there is the cost issue, fibre cable is cheap but splicing and enclosing
it is a different story. It would not be out of the question for a
fibre break to cost $3 to 5k to fix a simple break where a copper break
could be fixed for $300. If you are paying off a new
network you do not want high maintenance costs. Lets put it this way
if I had a choice of providers and one was under ground and the other on
power poles, I would be with the underground preferably ducted
network.</FONT> </FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>They finally notice things that have been there for years and get all
precious about the risk, ignoring the fact that nothing has
happened.<BR></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff size=2>Weather events do happen
regularly</FONT><BR></DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE cite=mid:2dd401c9b996$68e6d100$6500a8c0@hal type="cite">
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Copper cable is easy to locate and make
temporary repairs quickly, not to mention copper is a lot tougher
than fibre. <BR></FONT></DIV></BLOCKQUOTE>
<DIV>I think that's debatable - fibre is quite tough. You can make
it as tough as you want - depending what you order. (Ever seen the
armoured submarine cable for shallow waters?)<BR><BR>On power poles faults
are easy to find/fix - you just look up!</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff size=2>I hope you don't want me to
take that seriously. Get someone to show you a bit of fibre. It
doesn't have to come down to break. It deosn't stretch like copper.
You need to use an OTDR to locate faults and to do this you need to have
access points without splitters etc. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> Often fibre repairs get a bad rap because the cable is
quite strong </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff size=2>I am not sure about
that</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>- so by the time it's snapped it's really messed up (eg. ever
seen it fibre really messed up because of a big earth drill pulling and
snapping it?</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2><FONT color=#0000ff>That is underground
cable. I haven;t seen to many direction drills that go through thin
air. From my point of view those cables should have been located
properly</FONT> </FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> Cu cables tend to be so heavy they break in different
ways.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#0000ff><FONT face=Arial size=2>Actually quite often the
bearer breaks and the cable falls on the ground and the cable is still
connected through resulting in many customers still having a
phone</FONT><BR></FONT><BR>Doing Cu repairs is time consuming and hard on
large cables.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff size=2>And should never be
required. There exist cable locators and vacumn excavation
equipment. I have no sympathy for careless operators who get big
bills. The thing about underground is that if a ducted cable is cut
it is generally in good weather and a quick repair can be
undertaken.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> Fibre splicing these days can be a lot quicker - you can much
more easily run temporary fibre cables than Cu ones. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff size=2>perhaps on cables > 100 pr,
but such damage is preventable if good practice is followed. I am
yet to be able to order a storm or wish a bush fire away. That is
the distinction. Using your reasoning we should probably not go ahead with
the NBN because Telstra's underground cables are going to be cut by all
the cowboy operators constructing the NBN.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> I'm not sure if you've ever watched someone repair or punch
down a 1200 pair street cable, but it's a lot harder than doing
fibre.<BR></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff size=2>Believe it or not I have
watched, in fact I have done it. What really makes it interesting is
when it is a randon jointed cable which means both ends need to be
identified as well. But I do think such cable cuts are a lot rarer
than cables coming down in storms. In fact I would recon there would
be less than 2 nation wide annually all over Oz. Stom damage from
wind or trees would be probably 20000 to 50000 anually I think that is a
material difference. In fact the numbers could be 10 to a 100 times
higher than that.</FONT></DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE cite=mid:2dd401c9b996$68e6d100$6500a8c0@hal type="cite">
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>I fellow can locate and make temp repairs
to copper cable, fibre splices need to be prepaired and protected making
temporary repairs that would take 15 minutes on copper take 4 or 5 hours
and more than 1 person on fibre. If the $43Bn cost estimate is
based on 70% aerial deployment then it may well blow out to $100BN + if
it were to all be put underground.</FONT></DIV></BLOCKQUOTE>
<DIV>If you've got real cable damage then fibre ain't going to be hard to
fix. Maybe you need better splicing guys? I can give you some
references ...<BR></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff size=2>No its not hard, it just
takes longer than copper and cost a lot more. By the way the last
time I looked there weren't to many 1200 pr cables in the distribution
network, most distribution cables are between 2 and 100 prs, with
most 30 or below. I can joint a 50 pr in 45 minutes. I can
do a 10 pr in 10 minutes. Try getting your gun fibre spicer to
do that. By the way FTTH design is differnet to IEN design and
will involve a lot more fibre in residential
streets</FONT></DIV></BLOCKQUOTE>
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<DIV><BR>So, why underground it unless necessary? The rest of
the world has moved on from this curiously Australian dislike of
overhead.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#0000ff><FONT face=Arial size=2>It provides for better
reliability in storms and fire events, end of story. Also there is a
report that all carriers that have external plant are required to fill in
regarding getting all the communications cables under ground which is a
requirement of the telecommunications act</FONT></FONT></DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE cite=mid:2dd401c9b996$68e6d100$6500a8c0@hal type="cite">
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>My analysis would be that if Rudd is as
keen as he is to build FTTH then he needs to buy/ re
nationalise Telstra and build out the Telstra network and separate
it etc. That would be a cheaper way to do it.
<BR></FONT></DIV></BLOCKQUOTE>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>It'd cost $40b to buy Telstra, then another $43b to do FTTH. So
instead of $43b you're out $83b. What's the point of
that? </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2><FONT color=#0000ff>It would cost $41BN
to $50bn to buy Telstra which would give you the ability to fund
$6BN per annum out of free cash flow to extend the existing fibre
network not build it from scratch, so my point is that it would cost $41BN
to do what they want, change the rules and refloat it for probably
$41BN =$0 cost to the taxpayer.</FONT> <FONT
color=#0000ff>There are many other reasons to do it this way as
well</FONT></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><BR> </DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE cite=mid:2dd401c9b996$68e6d100$6500a8c0@hal type="cite">
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Might I also add that not all government
assistance needs to be in cash form. Governments could also use
their business as a catalyst to encourage investment etc. This
would result in a better outcome for taxpayers who ultimately pay for
all of this. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2><BR> </FONT></DIV></BLOCKQUOTE>
<DIV>I don't think people have thought some of the investment part
through. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff size=2>I am absolutely sure of
that. The whole process has been flawed from the start</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> Nor why the government is doing it. <BR></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff size=2>The government are doing it to
save face and get even with Telstra for not submitting a valid bid.
It is as simple as that. It also looks like good politics, but when
interest rates start to climb again and go through the roof the mood may
change. They dont even have a business plan yet. How dumb is
that announce a $43 Bn project before they have a business plan.
That is assuming this bunch can do it for $43Bn which is unlikely.
There are less risky ways to achive this end which will cost a lot
less. If the governement has a lazy $43 BN to invest on a
nation building project then they should be looking at the Bradfield
scheme to solve the nations fresh water problems. As
I said to someone the other day, we humans need food and water to live but
we can survive with out internet, but better still we can have both for
the same money. FTTH will happen without this grand standing, once
the business case exists.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV></BLOCKQUOTE>
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<DIV><FONT face=Arial
size=2>Regards<BR> <BR>Tim<BR> </FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><BR> </DIV></BLOCKQUOTE></BLOCKQUOTE></BLOCKQUOTE></BODY></HTML>