TA,
I have having a very difficult time understanding your rationale. I had not realized that AOL had become the broadband monster you claim it to be. In fact, I had erroneously assumed, apparently, that AOL's stock price had started its decline because T beat it out for control of Media One, hence sounding the alarm that AOL was not advancing at a satisfactory rate in the broadband arena.
To qualify this post, I have positions in both AOL, T, and ATHM, with no plans to sell any of them. After listening to the ATHM conference call last night, it is quite apparent to me that the Liberal-Portland court decision was basically a non-event, akin to some freak fringe group protesting for some obscure cause nobody cares about in some corner of the world. Sounds to me like many of the other transfer agreements will proceed as planned.
You claim that T is now stopped for years. Are you serious? There are two options--T "stops", and the propaganda machine churns out that people are being denied choice, rather than provided choice, if ADSL is their only options. In Portland, that means that USW has free reign to continue to gouge people $80/month for ADSL. And no, my figures are not exact, but I bet they are close. Now, this all assumes that the ruling is not overturned, nd this "openness" becomes a national norm. Somehow, I doubt this becomes reality.
The second option is that T continues, and charges an assessment for use, just like any other utility would charge for water/sewer service to new areas. Instead of frontage, they would probably charge by the current buzzword--eyeballs. This would probably make it cost prohibitive for AOL to even get access to the lines. AOL doesn't have near the financial ability to raise capital that T, and its new companies, do.
The common sense answer is that T charges an assessment for use, probably regulated by some governement entity based on the lobbying efforts, and both companies can compete, although ATHM will get the head start. If ATHM can satisfy their initial customers, much like AOL dominated Compuserve and Prodigy in the early going, ATHM should be great.
Just where is AOL deploying all of this broadband? And why did their lack of broadband activities initially create concern, and stock price drops, very recently? Please expound on this subject--I am very interested, because I had no idea that AOL was such a broadband monster at this point with ADSL.
The problem with your statements, is you create people like this:
Message 10030582
It is apparent that people bought AOL blindly based on this court ruling, and even though it is basically a non-event, they don't comprehend it, because they haven't the slightest grasp of what AOL is, what ATHM/T is, or any of the issues surrounding the subject. Now if the Catbird's seat is using propaganda to entice these unsophisticated, gambler-type people with too much time and money on their hands to throw money at AOL because it is a Net stock, and everybody says how great this ruling is for it, I guarantee you the stock price will not stay up. These type of bombastic statements, like you made, are exactly what the "value" players, who continually pick at the stereotypical lottery-player mentality epitomized by that post, use as a prime example of why Net stocks are a joke. And most of us understand that nothing is farther from the truth, that Net stocks are viable growth vehicles great for long-term investments.
Please expound on your statements in your post, especially about how much AOL is deploying broadband. I find them hard to believe, and hard to stomach posts like the one I referenced. It doesn't make me very confident in my investment in this company if that is the true level of understanding of the shareholders.
Thanks,
G |
