Doug,
(You said: AT&T's Teleport acquisition addresses this same market (a little). It's TCOMA buy announced today, while interesting for other reasons, does not.)
Teleport, as you note, targets the business (higher margin, more sedentary) end of the voice-data-image market. Certainly TCI does not dp that. Nonetheless, strategically, doesnt TCI's cable give AT&T an opportunity to offer something closer to one stop shopping to business customers by giving T more of its own local capacity? And what about the data transmission opportunity with the cable? Does this solve to some extent T's data transmission capacity appetite? How much of this buy is a bet on the continuing convergence of PCs and TVs? If this is a driver of the deal, how much of the convergence is relevant to the business segment of the market. What kind of international penetration does TCI have, if any?
This deal fills the plate for a discussion on strategy, don't you think so? - Mark
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