If anything, this Level-3 news detracts from HAUP
Broadcast/Yahoo realize that bandwidth is the key to delivering higher margin content. Why do you think AOL was on capitol hill all month trying to get the Cable Modem guys from excluding AOL's 17mil members access! Broadcast/Yahoo are accessible by any browser layer extendable software, that is already available in a million WebTV and thru a million Smart Cable Boxes (Cable Modem and DSL access should rise to over 3 million by year end). They know the future growth of this industry is being held back by a 56K POTs line Pipe, and are doing something about it. This pretty much helps kill the hypsters notion that Broadcast/Yahoo would bother having anything to do with any HAUP/WAVX dead on arrival solutions.
I have a funny feeling any deal you hear from HAUP on the DTV/WAVX card will come from MicroSoft. Windows2000 is around the corner, and HAUP will just pull the same stunt they did with Windows'98 and WAVO, for Windows2000 and WAVX. They'll get to do a press release that all the MSFT shareholders will see, the stock will run for another day, and then everyone will remember what a joke WAVX has turned into since Windows'98 came out, and will simply expect the same thud from WAVX. In this scenario everyone is happy. MSFT gets another "feature" to hype in order to get people to upgrade to NT-5.0, Opps, I mean Windows2000, HAUP gets a new gimmick to help sell DTV cards that nobody really needs for Xmas. WAVX gets a big name to endorse and peddle their chips to other Ecommerce providers, and shareholders in these stocks get another excuse to stay long. But in the end, it will turn out EXACTLY like WAVO did last year. Oh well... |
