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Technology Stocks : LAST MILE TECHNOLOGIES - Let's Discuss Them Here -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Carolyn who wrote (4216)	6/16/1999 5:42:00 PM
From: MikeM54321	Respond to of 12823

Re: AT&T and Charter (Phone Deal?) Carolyn, Thanks. That was an interesting piece. Sure enough, it brings up the debate about access. I won't comment on because I'm sure the thread has had enough of my views. The Charter deal sounds like a similar situation that Armstrong is trying to work out with Time Warner. Maybe it wasn't TWX? But my 15 minutes will be up before I can researh it. Found it with 10 minutes to spare. It wasn't Time Warner. It was Comcast they are working a deal with. Probably AT&T won't make an announcement until the heat is off the Portland decision. Thanks, MikeM(From Florida) ____________________________ Charter hopes to hook up with a phone company By Jerri Stroud Of The Post-Dispatch Bloomberg News Provided Some Information For This Article. Sometime next year, Charter Communications Inc. plans to team up with a telephone company -- possibly AT&T -- to offer local phone service over its cable systems, a Charter official said this week. AT&T declined to comment specifically on a possible joint venture with Charter. Charter, based in Des Peres, has grown to become the nation's fifth-largest cable company since last summer, when investor Paul Allen bought the company. Allen, co-founder of Microsoft Corp., expects to spend about $9 billion on cable acquisitions this year. Barry Babcock, Charter's vice chairman, said that his cable company is focusing first on upgrading its cable systems to digital technology, but that it plans to partner with a telephone company next year to offer local phone service. "We won't necessarily do a telephone deal with AT&T, but we probably will," Babcock said during a panel discussion at the National Cable Television Association in Chicago. He could not be reached for more specific comment on his remarks. AT&T plans to test telephone and high-speed Internet services in St. Louis and nine other cities later this year. AT&T's trial will use the TCI Communications Inc. cable systems it bought earlier this year. TCI provides cable service in St. Louis and in St. Charles County. If the phone giant wanted to offer the service throughout the St. Louis area, it would need access to Charter's approximately 247,000 customers in St. Louis County, the Metro East area and other nearby communities. AT&T eventually could become a "very aggressive competitor" to local phone companies, said Mel Marten, a telecommunications analyst with the Edward Jones brokerage firm. "The obstacle is that it's going to take some time." Marten said he expects AT&T to test the service on its own cable properties before proceeding with joint ventures. The company also will have to develop systems for billing, customer service and marketing, he said. In a separate speech to the cable convention, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission urged local governments to resist the urge to put new regulations or technical standards for Internet access through cable systems. William E. Kennard, the FCC chairman, said the Internet would grind to a halt if local communities each enacted different standards. "The information superhighway will not work if there are 30,000 different technical standards or 30,000 different regulatory structures." Kennard was reacting to a ruling by a federal district judge in Portland, Ore., which said the city could force its cable television franchisee to open its lines to all Internet service providers. "Imagine if we had a highway system where every town could set the parameters for the size of cars and the size of lanes," Kennard said. "We wouldn't be able to drive to the store, much less to another state."