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Technology Stocks : AUTOHOME, Inc

ATHM 23.46

-1.2%

3:59 PM EST

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To: E. Davies who wrote (24351)	8/1/2000 4:21:58 PM
From: KailuaBoy	Read Replies (1) of 29970

Lets do on topic for a sec: The heart of the reason we all own ATHM is the assumption that there is huge built up demand for broadband and that people are going to be crawling all over themselves to get to it. The market however has no such faith. I'm assuming that the huge pent-up demand is for "Internet access" and that the default option for that access is becoming "residential broadband" much the same way that there was a huge pent-up demand for personal computers and the default option was the latest PC or Mac. I believe that the applications that are enabled by the technological step forward will make BB a necessity and not just an option. Right now it's still in the stage where someone has the ability to choose narrowband and not incur too much pain (except for the dialing in which is not trivial). Is this true? Or is it just a "first adopter" syndrome? Is the demand still greater than the supply where @home has already been available for 6 months? We all all basically internet savvy people by definition. Of course we want broadband. What about your neighbor? Your kids best friend? I'm guessing that as you canvas younger and younger groups of consumers you'll see a general shift in attitudes like this: Older - I don't care about the Internet except for chat and email. Keeps me in touch with my loved ones. Don't change what I have if it is going to make it complicated. Middle - What does it cost? Does this mean that I'm going to pay my awful cable company even MORE money? Will I have to pay my crappy phone company MORE money? If not...sounds like something I may look into. (Bundling services into one bill with a lower overall cost makes sense here and would drive sub growth. What if you could get rid of your phone company and have phone, Internet and cable TV on one cheaper bill?) Younger - A cable modem is part of who I am. Hilfiger clothes, I never miss Love Line or TRL (Total Request Live), can't believe they haven't kicked the naked guy off Survivor and I wouldn't even think of having my friends over if I had a dial-up Internet connection. Rich graphics, the latest thing syndrome, on-line games (males) are core features of this set and should not be considered as luxuries. Youngest - Don't know what dial-up is. I want people to do a canvas of the status of demand for @home. Find out how long the wait for install is. Find out why people still are not signed up. We did this kind of thing very thoroughly a year ago. Its time to ask again. How is @home penetrating established areas? How is @home doing vs. DSL in areas where they overlap? Will @home need to lower prices to increase penetration? Good questions. We should all do this. I'll ask around. I am not representative as I have a 1.5mb DSL line in the city, by the way it's slowing down. I need to do some speed tests but I believe the lack of infrastructure is making the platform start to creak as more people sign up. I have a weekend place where I have dial-up and it is PAINFULLY slow. @Home service is available but I haven't switched because it is telephony return and I don't want to bother with having someone drilling holes in my house and installing more phone jacks, etc. I suspect this will change soon as the current service is so slow that I can't effectively use the Internet. I'll let you know what I go with. I haven't even considered wireless. KB

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