Having spent most of my ca reer as an unabashed evangelist, adopting the skeptical perspective has proven a bracing tonic. Perhaps this comes easier to people who grow up on the technology buy side--abused souls who must live with the consequences each time bleeding-edge vendors fail to live up to their hype. But achieving harmony between the passion that drives technology and the hardheaded realism required to turn dreams into reality is a balance worth seeking. With that in mind, let me make some predictions for the coming year.

What Lies Ahead? The cable TV industry will be revealed to be a hopeless morass, totally unsuited to participating in the telecommunications revolution. Tele-Communications Inc. CEO John Malone will find his sucker in Bill Gates, who will be left holding the bag when the entire cable industry executes another "back-to-basics" campaign. Cable mo dem vendors that haven't figured out how to eke out a living supplying foreign markets will go belly-up, giving us a ringside seat as the wheels come off high-flying start-up @Home, the most egregious initial public offering of 1997.

The trade press will turn against ADSL, and deservedly so as deployment bogs down. Widespread competition in the local loop will remain a receding goal. Dreams of broadband consumer access will give way to the reality of a long slow march from 56 Kbps up though ISDN and on to the unglamorous midband (64 Kbps to 384 Kbps), where most consumers will likely spend the next decade.

The CDMA versus TDMA digital wireless battle will continue unabated, neither side delivering a knockout punch. Dueling hype campaigns will shift attention to the third-generation cellular standards battle now entering warm-up rounds in Japan. Consumers will come out big winners as PCS competition drives airtime prices down to a nickel a minute and multimode phones paper-over the incompatibility fiasco.

The Internet will continue its meteoric growth, confounding those who predict megalapses as supply balloons to meet demand.

IP telephony wil l take the world by storm, collapsing international long-distance tariffs. Companies that cling to circuit-switched technology too long will be punished.

And oh yes, one more thing: 1998 will finally be the year of wireless data. By the time you read this, I will have plunked down my first venture capital bets in this space. As Charlie Brown likes to say, "This time for sure."

Thank you, Network Computing Before I go, let me thank the editors and staff of Network Computing for lending me this bully pulpit and helping me find my voice. I may not have been the easiest columnist to work with, but your professionalism civilized me in the end. Readers and companies caught in my crosshairs, particularly the CDMA mafia and the legions of humorless ham radio operators, can be glad they won't have me to kick around anymore. Be warned, though, I won't be dis appearing altogether. You'll be able to find my flaming op-eds in InternetWeek, Network Computing's sister publication.

So farewell, fellow cybernauts, it's been a gas. See you on the Internet!

Bill Frezza is a general partner at Adams Capital Management. The opinions expressed here are his own. He can be reached at frezza@alum.MIT.EDU or techweb.cmp.com/nc/frezza/frezza.html.