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Technology Stocks : AT&T -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: FR1 who wrote (2658)	7/17/1999 2:25:00 PM
From: American Spirit	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 4298

Pardon me, by the FCC I meant them plus the congressional committee which works closely with them and ends up deciding such things. Of course I am not legal expert here. But my point is - The FCC (and congress) does not want a confusing jumble of local regulations throughout the nation. That would be a regulatory and legal nightmare. Instead, I believe congress (with the FCC advising them and lots of lobbyists in their ears) will come up with one set of rules as they did with long-distance calling. ATT owns the pipe and can do what it likes with it except that they cannot disallow paid access. But what if there is not enough band-width for everyone? Then ATT would have a valid point that they can only allow minimal competition. Fair enough? Maybe not but whatever compromise they come up with it's not going to squash ATT's plans IMHO. That is not in the nation's interest, only AOL's. And AOL has plenty of other ways to survive and flourish. Besides, why feel so sorry for AOL? They have close to a monopoly now as an ISP. They will have a hard time making themselves look like poor victims. Also, AOL and others can continue using local phonelines as well as satellite feeds to compete as sat dishes do now with cable. In the longrun maybe they'll even come up with competitive non-cable feeds. Or use what's left of the cable market which ATT doesn't control. Either way, ATT holds the trump card just as MSFT does with software. They may be forced to give up a modest piece of their "monopoly" for appearances sake but they will remain dominant. They know this and I'm sure are willing to make a few concessions if forced to. They wouldn't have spent hundreds of billions to buy cable unless they felt secure about a positive outcome. Look at the MSFT case now for comparisons (and ATT can learn from MSFT's mistakes). Instead of being arrogant like MSFT was ATT can give the appearance of sharing and wait as AOL makes new alliances (as they did with Netscape and Sun) until their ability to compete is clear. MSFT stock rallying now shows that the market believes MSFT will survive the anti-trust case. ATT will also emerge relatively unscathed IMHO. This is just my layman's guess but it leads to the general believe that ATT is going to be one of the best blue chip investments of the next decade and beyond. As soon they as they get over some legal hurdles and begin mass roll-outs this stock should double or triple from here. I'm somewhat amzed it hasn't moved more already with a PE of 26 compared to AOL's of 242. Quite a difference, especially when you consider AOL may be soon forced to give up its $20 a month fees and find other ways of making money. Anyone else with a better informed opinion? I'd love to hear more.