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

To: sillen who wrote (11475)	6/19/1999 11:29:00 AM
From: Frank A. Coluccio	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 29970

Hi Sillen, I once posited that this thread was becoming heavily skewed and weighted disproportionately in favor of being a T/TCI subject, when in fact it is about ATHM. What I was saying goes beyond the obvious. If the concerns expressed here focus on ATHM, then there are other aspects to its existence that not only have never been mentioned, but which would offset some of the things that are mentioned at the same time. Your mention of the following elicited my response here: "Also if you read ATHM's annual report there are various services that are currently not included in ATHM's agreement with the cable cos such as Internet telephony, Internet videoconferencing and various multimedia contents." The common notion here is that ATHM might at some time allow these and soho activities on their lines, if and when they institute tiering, or when they bore out a few more channels for their use on the HFCs. However, while that may be true in may cases where T is concerned, other MSOs in the ATHM group are already allowing more robust content delivery, even for business uses, over cable modem, but not under the residential model known as @home. Instead, they are extending these expanded capabilities over cable modem under the banner of @work. I knew that this was coming, but I didn't know that it already existed. Apparently, it has at Comcast, in any event. I recently received a call from one of my partners who advised me that he was using Comcast's @Work service in New Jersey, costing upwards of $260 per month, which included a router and feeds to each of his workers workstations in their soho location. The service uses Motorola CyberSurfer cable modems, which I believe will soon support IP voice (in September, I believe). I later read a news item concerning this voice capability that confirmed what he had stated. Comparable combined services from a copper T1, especially for small business usage with a T-1 port into the 'net, would run much higher than the stated $269 / month, even without voice. So, what's my point? My point is that I needed to hear this little tid bit of information from an actual end user, and it revealed to me that my information was old and distorted. More importantly, however, it demonstrated to me that my perceptions of what @home/@work are capable of have been to a large extent molded by what takes place on this thread, and that is, admittedly, no one else's fault than my own. ATHM, in contrast, is actually doing things beyond the published scope of what T and its predecessors have done. I should also note, for thoroughness, that T has other platform agendas which will, interestingly enough, conflict with @work, such as their " INC " offering which is copper-dsl-T1-ATM based, and designed to compete with MCI's On-Net, and FON's ION offerings, all of which are designed to provide enterprise and soho users with "end to end" services. And now these will also compete with an ever-growing number of enterprise-directed DSL providers like Covad, NorthPoint, etc. I saw a need to bring this information here for those who are as equally clueless as I was about what some of the other partners are doing, and contemplating doing, through @home's/@work's facilities. Regards, Frank Coluccio