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

To: FIRENZA who wrote (16009)	10/7/1999 11:48:00 AM
From: Killian	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 29970

Firenza! You deserve it! Could you share the future of your thoughts in regards to ATHM? Thanks & congrats! Kevin

To: FIRENZA who wrote (16009)	10/7/1999 12:39:00 PM
From: Carolyn	Respond to of 29970

Congratulations! Well worth it, fabulous post.

To: FIRENZA who wrote (16009)	10/7/1999 1:25:00 PM
From: ALTERN8	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 29970

ATHM #1 zdnet.com

To: FIRENZA who wrote (16009)	10/7/1999 2:09:00 PM
From: ALTERN8	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 29970

Firenza, Your post should make the post of the year IMO. I've read it twice and emailed it to 6 friends!

To: FIRENZA who wrote (16009)	10/7/1999 7:01:00 PM
From: Carolyn	Respond to of 29970

I just posted your post on the Classic Posts thread: Message 11480389

To: FIRENZA who wrote (16009)	10/7/1999 8:01:00 PM
From: Ahda	Respond to of 29970

Congradulations and here here is one from AT&T board for you. From: Steven Richard Thursday, Oct 7 1999 9:29AM ET Reply # of 2977 AT&T Cable Chaos DailyTish October 07, 1999 by Tish Williams It hasn't been AT&T's week. First MCI WorldCom's down-home CEO skips his cameo appearance on "Dukes of Hazzard" and instead decides to step up the long-distance pressure with a $115 billion purchase of Sprint. Then AT&T's head of broadband operations, Leo Hindery, vamooses. AT&T can rightly feel a little peeved. Not only did it suffer a long-distance onslaught but the loss of its cable commander as well. Company growth hinges on making that stupid cable plant pay off. Now it's got to find a walk-on cable guru because it's got the whole operation in the balance. And it was all because of Excite@Home. Hindery was a cable guy's cable guy. He knew the faces, shook the hands and ate the swanky salmon dinners alongside other keynoters. He understood the history of cable--its dirty beginnings and its money propositions. He laughed with the founders and struggled with cable's challenging need to get in on the Internet. As a cable guy, he knew mixing cable and content was a bad thing. Cable operators carry programs, they sign up channels for … la carte menus. But they don't own them. Hence the TCI vs. Liberty Media split. Two distinct (at least technically) arms, one for wires and cables, the other for T&A. Or tasteful foreign films with awkwardly worded subtitles. Whatever. Content filth, basically. @Home was a perfect complement to the new AT&T/TCI juggernaut--a local cable-modem service to bring a whole new suite of services to the pipe owner. Services are wonderful because they provide extra sources of revenue. E-mail, Web hosting and Internet access fees. All on the same bill. How glorious. Then @Home bought Excite and shot those profit-boost dreams to hell. Excite? Hello? Why, why, why would Tom Jermoluk go and sweep up George Bell, sending the steely glances and cumulative evil eyes of all future content creators AT&T's way? Hindery felt the pinch. It wasn't coming from AT&T's management, but from his potential source of services revenue and the future conflict of interest battle. Something had to be done, and when Hindery was asked about last week's rumor that AT&T would sell a stake in Excite@Home, Hindery justifiably labeled the notion "absurd." He had no reason to give up his service revenue; he just needed @Home to decide to split amicably from Excite. But things had been unraveling. After inciting a MediaOne mutiny to extract it from the leadership of Cox Cable, ensuring the future of settop boxes with a Motorola buyout of General Instruments, nonchalantly blowing off open-cable-access fears and getting AT&T into cable's VIP lounge, the telecom giant misspoke. It was pursuing its options. Excite@Home was pursuing its options. Hindery began pursuing his options. Cable was his baby. He was the longtime president of TCI, working with the unparalleled John Malone. Talk about combat pay... And here he had maneuvered AT&T deftly but wasn't getting the love he needed on the Excite@Home issue and who knows how many others. How could it draw into question Hindery's stance on the content issue? How could it even take a pause to talk to the media about the content issue? AT&T needed to own pipes, connections to homes and the loyal hearts of businesses, not a search engine and some portal prose. But in AT&T's defense, it was banking its whole future on Hindery's moves. A month earlier, Hindery made a bid on San Francisco book publisher Chronicle Books, where he was once the CFO. About a $40 million company, Hindery might just get the peace and confidence he has earned. To: Steven Richard who wrote (2974) From: Steven Richard Thursday, Oct 7 1999 9:31AM ET Reply # of 2977 C&W sells Japanese interests to Vodafone C&W, whose core businesses stretch from Europe to the U.S., the Caribbean and Asia, has sold over one billion pounds worth of minority assets and has long been expected to dispose of its Japanese cellular assets, where it lacks managerial control. Britain's second biggest telecoms group said its commitment to the Japanese market was now fully focused on carrier IDC, whose control it secured in June after Japan's first contested takeover saw it face off competition from giant NTT . Meanwhile Vodafone, which said its spend in Japan on acquisitions came to around $550 million, said it would become the second largest shareholder after Japan telecom in the carriers that serve each of the country's nine mobile telecoms regions. It is raising its stakes in the nine operators -- which have seen total customer numbers in their regions rise to around 6.8 million from 4.6 million last year - to between 21.4 and 28.8 percent from between 4.5 and 15 percent. Vodafone said it was also pursuing opportunities to deliver next generation mobile services in Japan following an agreement with Japan Telecom, in which British Telecommunications Plc (quote from Yahoo! UK & Ireland: BT.L) and AT&T Corp (NYSE:T - news) of the U.S. hold a stake. Around 39.4 percent of the Japanese population now own mobile phones, slightly higher than around 33 percent in Britain.