All said, Satellite Internet access does not pose competition to Cable.
When ATHM's cable access become available, I believe every one
will flock to subscribe. Who would give up a 1 Mbps(just to be conservative, it should be 10 Mbps) access with always on and single line interactivity to use DirecPC's dialup uplink, 400kbps downlink access with 4 second round trip delay?? Plus you have an ugly dish in the backyard.
Satellite is only good for some people who can't get Cable and DSL.
So, in my mind, I have absolutely ruled out GEO-orbit satellite based access such as DirecPC as a competitor to ATHM.
However, Low-orbit satellite access can be a threat to ATHM in 5+ years from now till Teledesic lunched all their low-priced satellites and worked out all the bugs in their networking software. You know, it is not a simple task to design software that links up all satellites in the sky. In the case of Low-orbit access, there is 800 satellites in the sky that pretty much cover every inch of the earth. The round trip problem is solved since the distance from the dish to the satellite is not huge.
I would say Teledesic's low orbit satellite access will be the one that eventually replaces ATHM and DSL. But don't worry, untill they lunched all the satellites and worked out all the bugs in the software, it's gonna be like 7 years from now.
In the mean time, it has to be cable taking over the majority of the market and DSL taking the minority of market. That's why ATHM will
be a big success. I don't mean to hype. But I can't help but to be forced to early retirement with this stock. |
