Eric/Frank, it's conservative to assume that transit costs will continue to trend down as bandwidth becomes a commodity. that being said, athm's exclusive contracts with it's mso partners would over time go from an asset to a liability. athm's long term value isn't derived from the % of the monthly service fee that it's users pay to their cable company.....XX% of $0 is $0 and that will be the case as the supply and access/availability of/to broadband services increases.
everyone seems to dwell so much on the expiration of athm's distribution contracts and overlook or ignore the long term positioning the company has achieved. athm owns some great assets including matchlogic, enliven, imall, work.com, excite - and all of the excite partnerships with best of breed providers of internet based applications such as email, calendaring, webenabled voice mail, messaging, etc...
don't get me wrong, i understand that there is a large value to having exclusive distribution access for the next couple of years but the long term value lies in athm's ability to leverage this asset during this time by building/creating value for its customers......i don't mean a fat ip pipe either because i assume that will be a commodity shortly after athm's exclusivity expires.
-t |
