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Technology Stocks : AUTOHOME, Inc -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: chirodoc who wrote (10777)	6/8/1999 2:13:00 AM
From: Rippletum	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 29970

I wonder at what time commentator Blodgett's recent negative comments came out, before or after the conference call? If after, he had a different take on the conference call. The main weakness in the arguments made by the Athm representatives during the conference call were to the two questions related to the issue as to whether the open access can be brought up at any time whether or not at transfer of a franchise, or at a renewal or at any other time since the internet access was argued to be an "essential utility" (or whatever it was defined as). I do not believe that the conference call addressed these questions well, as the Athm commentators said that the "essential utility" argument would be "overturned on appeal" and as for at renewal time, they did not answer the question except to say that it was not in the interest of the local govt's citizens. Notwithstanding, the open access initiative may be trumped by the overriding limitiation that the technology is simply not there yet to provide truly open access to ISP's. It seems that there was a good argument that the upstream capability is too constrained to permit many more Athm type ISP providers. That could defeat the open access issue in and of itself and leave the competing ISP's to having to pay an additional fee in addition to Athm's service fee. At least for the time being, the technology limitation will hold off competing ISP's for a long enough period for Athm to gain a sizeable lead and presence in this market.