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Technology Stocks : HIGH SPEED ACCESS {HSAC} -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Goldbug Guru who wrote (214)	6/20/1999 12:03:00 AM
From: Goldbug Guru	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 963

Making Money in Broadband by Pat Dorsey \| As anyone who's used the Internet from home knows, there's a real need for speed at the consumer level. Tired of slow and frustrating downloads, individuals are clamoring for faster, "always-on" web access from their homes--which is why just about any company even remotely associated with broadband has seen its shares skyrocket over the past year. Broadcom BRCM, a maker of chips for cable modems and set-top boxes, is up almost 200% over the past year, and @Home ATHM, a provider of high-speed Internet access over cable networks, has risen over 150%. With @Home quintupling its subscriber base from 90,000 to 460,000 between the first quarter of 1998 and the first quarter of this year, it's pretty clear why @Home and Broadcom's shares have screamed upward--consumers are ravenous for high-speed Internet access, and the companies providing the access and the equipment are growing like crazy. Although cable isn't the only way of delivering broadband to consumers--regular old copper phone lines can also do the trick once your local phone company upgrades its network with the necessary equipment--it's by far the most widespread. There are more than 10 times as many homes in the U.S. currently getting broadband through cable as there are through phone lines, mainly because the cable companies have been much more aggressive about rolling out high-speed access than have the ever-slothful regional bell operating companies (RBOCs). This is one reason why broadband-by-cable (and, by extension, companies like Broadcom, @Home, and RoadRunner) has received the lion's share of investors' attention.