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Gold/Mining/Energy : InfoInterActive Inc (IIA-ASE) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Don Johnstone who wrote (1023)	9/16/1999 10:25:00 AM
From: Marc	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1622

Funny that Golden, House #38, has not made ONE trade in the last month, and started to sell yesterday, no wonder Canadian stocks are hard to move up, when no news no trade, and when we see a good one, they dump.JMO

To: Don Johnstone who wrote (1023)	9/23/1999 2:48:00 AM
From: thomas gentry	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1622

Bell's current aggressive marketing of their high-speed Internet service is clearly taking the shine off IIA's apple. In one fell swoop Bell has eliminated ICM's line-doubling benefit. Bell's system offers unlimited Internet access and completely normal phone use over the same line, something that is still a distant dream for VOIP designers. How about pricing? In my case, my use of unlimited ATT Internet access in combination with ICM's premium service costs me roughly $340 a year before tax. By comparison, Bell's pricing would be $438 before tax (assuming I take advantage of Bell's half-price installation offer before the end of October). Even so, Bell's system looks very sweet, especially when you factor in the giant speed advantage. Their system would make my Internet connection 17 times faster than my current 56kb modem. A $100 premium seems pretty reasonable for speed like that. Of course, like every product that Bell markets, this doesn't tell the whole story. My ATT/ICM bundle includes call display, a very sophisticated call answer system, and call forwarding. Bell's package does not. To get the same features, Bell's $100 speed premium would have to be bumped up to more than $225. Moreover, Bell's high-speed service is line-dependent - you can't access it from anywhere but the registered line. Though Bell partially addresses this issue by providing 10 hours of free Internet access through their "regular-speed" POP network, their "unlimited use" claim is clearly not so. Thought of in this way, Bell's $225 speed premium for "not-so-unlimited" Internet access doesn't seem quite so attractive. All tolled, Bell would bump my annual Internet bill to $663... 95% higher than my current ATT/ICM bundle! In my humble opinion, IIA must jump on this pricing issue hard and fast before Bell's warm'n'fuzzy (but typically deceitful) ad campaign starts to erode their existing customer base. An informative "feature-for-feature" e-mail or two to their customer base is certainly in order at this point in time. And while they're at it, it might be time to start firming up relationships with the big ISPs (like ATT, Sprint, etc.). Make no mistake about it; Bell's initiative has taken direct aim at those boys. Bundled ATT/ICM, Sprint/ICM, "your ISP here"/ICM solutions would provide a quick, effective and direct response to this challenge. In the meantime, I'm expecting to see continued erosion of ICM's share price until the market gets a whiff of IIA's competitive response to Bell's price-doubling, not-so-unlimited Internet initiative. It's now or never boys. Comments? Thomas