Eric,
While your comparisons are indeed interesting to follow, I think that you may be missing an important point when accepting the fact that RMI and ABOV have like business models. IMO, they differ significantly.
RMII is fundamentally an Internet Service Provider. They fulfill many of the common roles associated with ISPs. Whereas, ABOV's role has been alsmot singularly one of backbone provision and facilitation of route peering for ISPs. There is a big difference here, especially with respect to the potential levels of exposure to those risks which affect local and regional ISPs.
ABOV is not (at least not yet) competing in areas associated with administering to individual user accounts like RMII, Mindspring, Erols, etc. While there is nothing inherently wrong with RMII's (or any end user oriented ISP's) strategic direction, it is indeed not the same as ABOV's, and the dissimilarity is enough to warrant a different valuation strategy.
True, RMI may also perform peering and route facilitation services for other ISPs as well (they all do to some extent, in fact), as add-ons to their normal ISP functions. But ABOV claims to be a pure play at the peering gaime, and so far they have been.
In fact, ABOV has vowed on several occasions to refrain from ever entering the direct end user customer account space, in favor of being an ISP's ISP. Of course, I take the latter with a grain of salt, but that is their stated position as of this point in time. FWIW.
Regards, Frank Coluccio |
