SW, Whew! (not a pick), lost my arrow that you make move around with that flat bottomed, two buttoned egg on that heating pad. Re:ETVC:
See the last sentence concerning manufacturing of set tops:
NEW YORK, May 18 (Reuters) - R.E. "Teddy" Turner, son of
media mogul Ted Turner, is getting ready to deliver the
Internet to the masses through a 21st-century version of Amway
Corp.
Turner is chairman of Compu-Dawn Inc. <ETVC.O>, which sees
the roughly 60 percent of the U.S. population that doesn't own
a personal computer as its target audience.
"There is a huge digital divide in this country," Turner
told Reuters. "There's the percentage of people that get it
all, and then there are the people who are saying, www.what?"
Compu-Dawn sells "e.TV" television set-top boxes offering a
full package of Internet, TV, phone services and basic
computing. Like Amway, the world's largest direct sales
company, Turner wants customers to be his biggest salesmen.
The plan pits Compu-Dawn against AT&T Corp <T.N>, whose
recent acquisitions and partnerships in the cable industry have
positioned it to be a dominant provider of such services. But
Turner said AT&T will market to the high-income customer, while
failing to reach the average American household.
The cable and voice telephone businesses have peaked,
Turner said, while "the big growth industry is the Internet."
Like his father, the CNN news channel founder who agreed to
donate $1 billion in Time-Warner Inc. <TWX.N> stock to the
United Nations, the younger Turner has a humanitarian side.
"All the world's problems come from ignorance. If everybody
had access to all the information on the Internet, you could
solve a lot of problems," he said.
You could also make a buck or two reselling the company's
boxes to your friends and neighbors. Compu-Dawn is recruiting
"independent representatives" to make an initial investment of
$495 to $795 to begin selling the service, Turner said.
The basic product, which includes computing functions like
word processing, sells for $379, a lot less than a typical
personal computer. For $249 customers can have just Web access.
After the initial charges, Internet access costs $19.95 a
month.
The Jacksonville, Fla.-based company has already recruited
about 18,000 sales representatives in the United States and
Canada, but only 4,000 set-top box customers, partially due to
initial problems getting enough boxes to meet orders, Turner
said. |
