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

To: Frank A. Coluccio who wrote (12487)	7/15/1999 10:25:00 PM
From: GraceZ	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 29970

Gee Frank- If I knew you would have been reading I'd have thought up an answer to that in advance! <VBG> Here's what I have to add. If they make some kind of move now, the Feds, they may lock themselves into something in the future that they have no way of seeing from where we stand now. Things are changing so fast (not fast enough for the people on this thread) that a bad piece of legislation is perhaps worse than none at all. As for your question....when? Who can say, perhaps as the exclusivity agreements expire the cable partners will be looking to dance with other partners and there will be less need for the Feds to step in. Perhaps some new technology appears in the next few years that makes a buried cable line obsolete....these things happen (of course, the chances of it happening without YOU knowing about it are slim to none) but they do happen. A new compression, a new modem, collective brainwave amplification....etc. It makes sense to me that the locals do not have the juristiction to pass laws over openning access, but then this doesn't matter if they have the ability to slow the rollout they will effectively killed the early mover advantage for ATHM. I expect, as most here do, that there will be open access on the cable in say the next three to five years. I'm hoping that the Feds never have to pull that trigger (either way), that there will be a way to open access that makes everyone a winner....(as opposed to everyone a whiner) If they are able by law to pull the trigger now, why not in three years after the upgrades are underway and we actually have more than a "test site" for phone service over cable? Its obvious that they want to keep that option open and have taken the tact of just using jawboning to try to keep the locals from revolting.