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To: Paul Engel who wrote (85837)	7/16/1999 5:52:00 PM
From: The Duke of URL©	Read Replies (6) \| Respond to of 186894

Please excuse an unsolicited, un-researched, unsubstantiated pure OPINION: Cable Modems are Dead, at least for the foreseeable future. @Home was formed for the purpose of funding TCI's R and D in the area. At the time (circa 1997), TCI was heavily in debt and could not fund the .5 Billion dollars it took to open only Six cities (of which you are not one). It not only requires the laying of all new cable, (one of the big surprises is that existing coax will not work), but also the tremendous expense of the equipment on both ends, not to mention the software. What I think @home did with most of the .5 billion they raised was redo their existing cable. I think they did this because at the heart of the company they are really TV guys. The old “push technology” paradigm. (Mainframe glass house thinking) nor could they convince the investment community to pop any more money directly to a company that was at the time 90% debt. Enter ATT. Armstrong /Allen says, hey we got the money, WE'LL do it. Boom, ATT buys TCI. And while ATT is talking to the public about “The Great Repository theory” i.e. ATT will be the storage house of the data, there business plan REALLY is to control the Infrastructure and the content. Well now along comes some LOCAL Judge in Portland and then one in Florida who says, “ya know, I don't care that the entire FCC staff is either ex-ATT or future ATT, here in Portland you guys are a “Common Carrier”, and you have to carry everybody's transmission, including AOL!! Whoopsee, this puts a severe chink in ATT's business plan. They aren't about to spend the (my guess) 30 Billion to carry somebody else's stuff. How many multi-billionaire Antenna guys do you know. The money is in the tollgate, not the asphalt. Two days later, Disney announces a spin off of Infoseek, Microsoft (with its 5 Billion Dollar investment in ATT) announces a new tracking company for its “internet stuff”, CPQ sells Alta Vista, and INTEL ANNOUCES A DEAL WITH CISCO TO DO DSL. Hmmm. INTC figured out that DSL is T-1 speed over EXISTING twisted pair. All INTC has to do is stick a Xeon at the CO, and a DSL MODEM in the home. ….Oh, Brave new world. Whooaa, ….that felt good. EOR* Duke *End Of Rant

To: Paul Engel who wrote (85837)	7/16/1999 5:56:00 PM
From: Pigboy	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 186894

Paul, << Their Cable Competitor, TCI, now tells me they haven't a CLUE when cable Modem access will be available in my neighborhood. >> I have the same feelings towards Pac Bell. I live IN the city of SF and feel that I am the only one here who can't get ADSL service; both my lines don't check out. I think Intel needs to work with PacBell as well as CSCO and GTE. ;-) pigboy

To: Paul Engel who wrote (85837)	7/18/1999 2:00:00 PM
From: Amy J	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 186894

RE: "Their Cable Competitor, TCI, now tells me they haven't a CLUE when cable Modem access will be available in my neighborhood." Hi Paul, aside from the fact I could merge a home phone line and computer line into one DSL line, and have lower fees, cable's sometimes inability to organize and proliferate is one reason why I went with DSL. Also, I'm not keen on cable's control over content - i.e. possibly promoting their own content. DSL is just plumbing and is content independent. I gained the impression cable would like to control content viewing to only their own content, when one cable company announced their intent to not allow their Internet customers the freedom to view Internet portals which compete with the cable company's content. Competition by control. This backfired- their customers had a fit. (Not sure what the final outcome was.) Not something DSL would do to its customer base - since DSL is content independent, they don't promote their own content. I am keen on portal's: more educational material, more choices, enables more independents [a term used to describe independent video producers who are not under the control of the major studios who control/decide what you and me would like to view], and portals will probably be less costly. All things which are better for the consumer. And the more portals there are, the more chips are needed to operate more portals. According to my friend, his PacBell DSL downstream speed can be as fast as 1 GB/sec, even though they advertise a guarantee min of 350 MB/sec. Amazingly fast. Amy J