SI
SI
discoversearch

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor.  We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community.  If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.
Technology Stocks : AUTOHOME, Inc -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?


To: Boplicity who wrote (11497)6/19/1999 10:22:00 PM
From: Frank A. Coluccio  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 29970
 
Greg, there is no one size fits all answer to your questions. I can speak for Manhattan, which I think all will agree is not representative of the world at large. Be that as it may, in the downtown financial district, every building has or can have access to TWX Cable. Trading floors demand it, banks need it, the exchanges need it and ordinary businesses need it.

As a side offering, TWX also offers traditional forms of voice and high speed data through their CLEC offering (Axs), whereby they run fiber from the HBO Building to multiplexers in tenant building communications easements, right next to BEL. Likewise, there are probably a half dozen, to as many as several dozen other carrier entities doing this at the same time in the larger buildings. I suspect that the same holds true for many other tier 1 and 2 cities around the country.

Within the larger buildings, some percentage of the tenants are smaller organizations, or field offices of larger ones. These outfits will require high speed Internet access, VPN services, and voice, and will likely be best served by DSLs, or T1s, due to two reasons: (1) the short distances from several different central offices; and, primarily due to number (2), the nature of their regular consumer grade of delivery. RR, itself, does not scale very well in these situations, at the present time, and wont, until they upgrade to allow for QOS and commercial type treatment.

So, I don't see an attractive play here for cable modems in these instances, unless TWX dramatically alters their architecture and makes the same kinds of head end (even if it's in the building easement) accommodations as those in the previous press release stories a couple of posts back.

Farther away from Gotham, several other cable cos pass by business parks and smaller residential neighborhood businesses. Here, I see the opportunity for a commercial grade @work kind of variant of cable modem, like I described upstream. In these areas, it is likely that dsl will be harder to come by, while cable is readily available. That is, if the MSO turns on their @work genre of high throughput, and tiered, provisions. But if they are going to be relegated to the normal consumer level of service, then they will be better off going with T1s, because in no time flat they will drown each other out (along with regular consumers) over cable, the way things stand today.

Regards, Frank Coluccio