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To: gpowell who wrote (19146)1/20/2000 11:00:00 PM
From: Frank A. Coluccio  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 29970
 
gpowell, thanks for the rollup. Two questions:

1. Do the new DSL deployments apply to both @work and @home, or just to one or the other? If the latter, which?

2. Are DSL deployments in any way tied to MSO territorial rights, hence tied to MSO terms and conditions? Or, are these new deployments a sign of home's beginning to exercise some level of autonomy where they are free to begin selecting other avenues of access? TIA, Frank



To: gpowell who wrote (19146)1/20/2000 11:26:00 PM
From: Solid  Respond to of 29970
 
These are all solid numbers. I liked the aggressive tone of Bell. This is not the old @HOME - it's an angrier version. I like it.

I too. Maybe some @-@home have been reading our thread. Other threads have not made as much mention of the psf ['passivity' stance factor] black eye of perception as some here have. They need to take the 'kick me!' sign off their back.

After reading KB's earlier posts...
I get this haunting image of TJ dressed as a shiftless gypsy with ring earring, head bandanna, dyed dark curly hair, beard and mustache in front of a horse drawn mobile wagon with a hand lettered arched sign that reads, I'm @home. He wears a vacuous expression, muttering incessantly, 'Open access means to me, ah, err, ummm'; as he numbly turns the crank on a staccato, metallic sounding music box while a small nasty monkey struts its stuff and tries to pee on anybody who looks like an analyst or media type.

I still believe TJ may be leaving this year.



To: gpowell who wrote (19146)1/21/2000 12:07:00 AM
From: E. Davies  Respond to of 29970
 
Unfortunately, the volume roll out of retail modems seems to have been delayed further out into late 2000.

Ugh.

2.5 to 2.8 million subscribers.

Double Ugh.

I liked the idea of 4 million a lot better. My expectation was more like ~3-3.5 million. From 1.15 to 2.5 is not exactly spectacular. As a matter of fact I think that this is the single worst news I have ever heard from ATHM. I can only hope they are trying to tame expectations, but given their past history I doubt it.

Why can't they speed up the installs more? What is taking so f'n long to get user install?

What is going on in broadband is a land grab of massive proportions. @home has shown up to the horse race riding a mule.

Eric



To: gpowell who wrote (19146)1/22/2000 4:02:00 PM
From: E. Davies  Read Replies (2) | Respond to of 29970
 
Just found the time to listen to the ATHM conference call. It was more uplifting than I expected.

corporate-ir.net

Bell had a little fire in him. I liked his statment that "We are going to put the fight back in Excite".

Sadly the a fair amount of the discussion of the business boiled down to having to defend against the issues that the market has held over ATHM's stock price. Did you know for example that 20% of ATHM homes are outside North America and have 7 year exclusivity agreements? They also had to point out several times that they have 3x the footprint of AOL/TWX and 2x the subscribers as RoadRunner.

Many times they referred to the issue of the exclusivity agreements expiring. They said they felt that renewal of many of them is assured, and that only 2-3 of the 23 MSO's might be able to find the technical skill to do what ATHM does. It is a top priority of ATHM (and what TJ will be spending a lot of his time on) to resolve now what the relationships with the MSO's are going to be post-exclusivity. They know the market needs to see this before the stock will succeed.

A couple of additions to your nice summary:

The estimated revenue growth for 2000 is 75%-85% above 1999.

The issue with subscriber growth was not as bad as I thought. Speaking to the analysts what was said was:
"Your subscriber estimates are currently clustered around 2.5 to 2.8 million which is clearly very doable". It was not an estimate from ATHM itself. This also means these estimates do not include DSL/Wireless & TV subscribers. If ATHM is aggressive in rolling out alternate platforms I think that my personal 3-3.5 million estimate is still quite acheivable. They claim they intend to be agressive and are already in negotiations with DSL providers.

I hope they hit AOL territory first and hardest. Then they should start petitioning for "open access" to TWX customers. Lets see how much fire @home really has!

You said: Unfortunately, the volume roll out of retail modems seems to have been delayed further out into late 2000.
That really was more a matter of interpretation and expectations than stated fact. "Buy your own" is available right now in some places and will steadily be growing through the year. As you noted they expect ~30% of new modems to be retail by next Christmas.

What matters more is any progress being made in speeding up installs, all the way to user install if possible. Sadly I found that Bell quickly glossed over that issue. I guess its not going that great. Install time is now ~ 1 1/2 hour.

Excite Broadband won't be released until late March (it was mid Feb. before- Hmmm..) Test marketing has shown "an order of magnitude" increase in time spent on the Excite pages with the new site. I feel a lot of Excite's future depends on how Excite Broadband grabs the public.

I found it humorous that the very first question from an analyst was about AOL. Sigh. The next several were about rolling out into DSL. Anything but the main core of the business...

The meeting was followed the last few days by a whole series of earnings estimate reductions. I don't know where the estimates came from anyway nor why they were reduced. I don't think they were due to any change in the view of the long term business however.

I was thinking of reducing my position in ATHM, but have decided not to. They still have a great future ahead no matter what the market thinks.

Eric