Scrapps, you're not a meany to display your ignorance on the subject of cable modems. You requested that the subject be dropped quite a while ago, and I complied. Now you seem to want to talk about it again. Okay. I am well aware that LanCity, Zenith, etc., etc., have been developing & manufacturing cable modems for quite some time now. So USR/COMS & MOT are putting out press releases now. Big deal. I stand by my belief that the $75 million order for MOT is "materially insignificant" in all respects for the foreseeable future, which for investors is approx. 2 years. Note that below I have high-lighted the fact that these 250,000 modems will be delivered "over the next two years". "All respects" includes bottom-line profit to MOT, and also with respect to the cable modem industry in general as an emerging source for internet access.
If all one went by was press releases, one might be led to think that the popular Pilot from USR must have helped things for USR last year. According to the USR management at the last quarter's earnings conference call, contributions to the profit line by the Pilot product were "materially insignificant" through 12-31-96.
Here's an article on the MOT modem order, which merited a whopping 2 inches in the "Business Briefs" section of the WSJ yesterday:
The Wall Street Journal -- March 19, 1997
Business Brief -- MOTOROLA INC.:
Tentative Modem Accord
Made With Time Warner
Motorola Inc., Schaumburg, Ill., said it signed a tentative agreement to ship 250,000 of its new CyberSURFR cable modems to New York media company Time Warner Inc. for delivery over the next two years. The tentative deal is in addition to an existing contract the wireless-communications concern has to supply Time Warner with 50,000 of the modems. Internet users and investors are counting on cable-modem technology to vastly reduce the amount of time it takes to send and receive video, exotic graphics and other large files. But after years of talk about the modems, the devices still aren't widely available. Motorola wouldn't say how many of the initial 50,000 modems it has delivered to Time Warner.
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