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To: E. Davies who wrote (14471)	8/14/1999 12:41:00 PM
From: gpowell	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 29970

The advantage is any number of ISP's can coexist by using the same infrastructure. Under your senario what limits an ISP from not overloading the common network? How can they overload it? The bandwidth you get is the bandwidth you pay for - the bandwidth will be efficiently used. DSL and wireless offerings will act as a user shunt if the bandwidth provided by the MSO's is not competitive in price/(mb/s). I know you propose each user have limited bandwidth (an idea the public wont go for) Cox@Home is already doing this - read the thread. what is to stop them from selling more bandwidth than the lines can handle? The ISP's don't control the bandwidth.

To: E. Davies who wrote (14471)	8/14/1999 12:51:00 PM
From: gpowell	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 29970

If ATHM would provide ISP's services and also network infrastructure to the other ISP's then you have a conflict of interest. In perception perhaps. Similar arrangements are common. It isn't necessarily a conflict of interest unless ATHM ISP is getting special services from the ATHM infrastructure. The way conflicts like this get resolved is regulation and price controls. Not what you were aiming for I bet. Can you point to examples of this. Did IBM have regulation imposed, does Microsoft. Yes they have both run into trouble with the FTC but regulation and price controls were never/have yet to be imposed.

To: E. Davies who wrote (14471)	8/14/1999 1:17:00 PM
From: gpowell	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 29970

I've heard this argument before and am glad for the opportunity to refute it. First, open access as defined by Opennet and the politicians does not give an "infusion of cash". They merely want to pay $x/month for access to the lines. There has been no proposal that the ISP's pay an "entry charge" to help build the infrastructure. Don't confuse the "open access" debate over the open access proposed here. Open access in a competitive market place is what is best for ATHM. It will be necessary for them to break out of the box that the MSO's have put them in. Simply put the MSO's put their 6MHZ channel up for competitive bid with some constraints as to how that bandwidth is partitioned to individual homes. In addition the bid winner must be able to provide some level of QoS consistent with maximum customer approval and thus revenue generation. Second, there are some things money just cant fix and can only be fixed with time. You really think AT&T does not have the cash to hire some installers? How much did they spend on TCI and UMG? Around $100 Billion I think, plenty of it in cash. In addition they just got a $5 Billion infusion of cash from Microsoft. AT&T has only recently merged with TCI, but yes I believe T does. And your points are right on. It is pure speculation on my part that the install rate is limited by the MSO's reluctance to hire and train temporary installers. This is a valid assumption however. In any case for the purposes of creating competition, which also allows ATHM to be freed from the yoke of the MSO's, open access must be implemented. Once ATHM is free to pursue offering services to other distribution systems their growth will not be limited by the MSO's.