To all:
There is a page one art. in the WSJ today that details recent announcements of John Malone, Chmn of TCI.
The article covers a lot of ground but, as it pertains to our int. in AMTX, the upshot of the art. is that TCI is not able to keep a full court press on the intro. of modems to provide access to the internet.
The article points out that the cable providers are all highly leveraged with debt as a result of all the consolidation acquisitions and their share of the existing market for video is being attacked by the dish people. As a result, the cable guys are in a squeeze that prevents them from making heavy expenditures to develop new markets. In fact, Moodys has downgraded TCI's debt rating already and this was the wake-up call for Malone to pull TCI back from its agressive expantion into technology to offer 500 channels, the internet etc.
TCI has test markets going in several places and they will continue to develop that business but, in an evolutionary rather than revolutionary manner.
If one makes the assumption that the satallite dish folks have all they can handle in their effort to take share from the cable guys, and, they have a capital intense program to provide other services such as internet access, it looks like the telco's really do have the time to put their own copper wire/adsl systems in place before major competition bites them in the butt.
Once the telco's own the turf, they will not let go easily. So, it would apprear that the cable guys and the dish guys will be looking up a large bore cannon for a long time to come.
If the above string of logic is reasonably close to being on target, the telco's have the time to do it right and, at this point in the dev. of the technology, it would seem that Amati is in an even better position than I thought.
The market must agree because the stock is up in todays trading.
Comments?
Regards:
Cliff |
