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

To: Solid who wrote (17010)	11/14/1999 12:28:00 PM
From: Solid	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 29970

Stats on willingness to switch ISP's. Cable is catching on. Courtesy The Fool thread. AOL does not 'fair thee well' @all. Nice graphic. theinternetanalyst.com

To: Solid who wrote (17010)	11/14/1999 10:59:00 PM
From: KailuaBoy	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 29970

Solid, There are clauses in the agreements between MSO's when they signed on with ATHM that set performance goals. TCOMA now T wasn't meeting one of those metrics - upgrade of plant. The clauses were put in there for exactly this reason. If you signed on with a team to run a 4x100 relay when you had a choice of teams to sign on with and one of the runners you signed on with chose to eat doughnuts all Summer instead of working out, would you want some recourse? This isn't as big a deal as it was before T bought TCOMA. T has thrown its' cards on the table and they all say "Cable". T is upgrading plant and will be well ahead of those metrics from now on. More importantly, the statement below needs to be clarified. (Taken from the article) > Excite@Home's cable partners have been concerned that the > Net service isn't signing subscribers fast enough, What's fast enough? Do they mean penetration rates are disappointing? Do they mean in real numbers? Penetration rates are increasing as markets are marketed to. They are getting better and better. Also, once you bag a home it doesn't get away. Ever. Who else can claim that? Noone. > according to published reports. The service has suffered > through some network problems and other service slowdowns > throughout the past year. ATHM is having growing pains. AOL had them. ATHM ripped out their entire backbone and replaced it with new hardware and capacity. They use Cisco BFR's (Gigabit Switch Routers) and are now redundant OC48 across the nation. Things should be getting better. Keep this in mind when MSO's leave summit meetings complaining about ATHM performance: 1. MSO's upgrade homes. When they don't upgrade quickly enough the typical response is to take two steps back and point at the new guy ATHM. 2. As the upgraded footprint fills in broad areas the job of marketing the service begins to look a lot better. How would you market to Nodes E, G, L and X in Sunnyvale? Rent real Estate on the back of the pizza flyers that are constantly being hung on your doorknob. Now ask yourself how would you market to the San Francisco Bay Area? Radio, TV (cable can do wonders here), biplanes at sporting events. You can launch "campaigns". ATHM is entering a phase where marketing to the masses will drive sub acquisition. Cable modems are built into new computers, upgraded homes are happening. It used to be if you advertised ATHM you would invite a negative effect. ie. many people would call and the peeps on the phone would be tasked with telling them that they couldn't get the service. Expect to see much more in terms of visibility from ATHM in the coming year. KB