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Non-Tech : E*Trade (NYSE:ET) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: SLSUSMA who wrote (13666)	5/12/2000 1:59:00 PM
From: Home-Run	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 13953

E-Trade Builds an Army of Advisers (Industry Standard) Now that online brokers have succeeded in turning the model for stock investment on its head, they're trying a new trick: turning their own business models upside down. E-Trade Group, the leading pure-play brokerage on the Internet, will add personal financial advisers to its roster of services later this year, says E-Trade CEO Christos Cotsakos. And the advisers will make house calls to E-Trade customers anywhere in the U.S. - an unprecedented personal touch among online brokerage firms. Taking a page from the business models of its brick-and-mortar competitors like Charles Schwab, TD Waterhouse Group and Fidelity, E-Trade will offer its customers access to certified financial advisers for money-management advice and portfolio evaluation. In addition to house calls, advisers will be available via telephone, online chats and e-mail. Just as venerable banks such as Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley Dean Witter have begrudgingly embraced the Internet, online brokers are beginning to abandon their all-electronic financial-services model. As a result, both extremes are seeking a balance. "Electronic advice is great, but some people just want to talk to somebody," says Cotsakos. "Access points to customers are unlimited. We know we have to have all the touch points available, and if that means you want someone to come to your house, then we'll be able to send a trusted financial adviser there." For years, E-Trade executives preached the electronic gospel, a strategy that helped build its success. In 1997, the company backed away from rock-bottom commissions in favor of more stock analysis and features, all of which were handled electronically. Today, E-Trade's customers trade online more actively than customers at Fidelity and TD Waterhouse. And most of their money is deposited electronically, as well: E-Trade only accepts physical deposits in the lobby of its headquarters, based in Menlo Park, Calif. Increasingly, the emphasis on digital is getting weak. E-Trade bought a network of 8,500 ATMs earlier this year, which created a nationwide physical presence for the company for the first time. This fall, E-Trade plans to open a storefront on Madison Avenue where customers can make deposits, trade online and chat about the market over coffee with other investors. The company plans to open another 14 stores in major metropolitan areas around the world. Cotsakos wouldn't give details on its network of financial advisers but says the service will be available within six months - either through a partnership with an existing network or by developing its own. Setting it up won't be cheap. It's taken Charles Schwab 13 years and a substantial amount of money to build and maintain its network of advisers, though not without some payoff. A Schwab spokesman estimates that 30 percent of its total assets are under management by advisers. "I've been hoping this was something [E-Trade] would do for a long time," says Scott Appleby, research analyst for Robertson Stephens. "All the demographics point to having a profitable financial-adviser business. The creation of wealth and transfer of wealth that we've seen in recent years is only going to continue for the next 20." It is unlikely that this will be Cotsakos' last step to take E-Trade away from the purely electronic model of its early days. Ultimately, he said, E-Trade will service its investors' needs, from the novice individual to the institutional trader, through any channel, any time of day, from anywhere in the world. "I want it all," Cotsakos says. Then he holds out his hand. "I don't want any sand slipping through these fingers."

To: SLSUSMA who wrote (13666)	5/12/2000 2:08:00 PM
From: 10K a day	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 13953

Excuse me Dude... @Home has 67 Percent of the (WorldWide) BroadBand Market. @Home Added 350 Thousand Subscriber Last Quarter. The Entire (WorldWide) DSL market is 200 Thousand Subscribers. It's a 5 Year Plan.... @HOME..is adding Subscribers at 4000 Per Day... With fixed Costs...That's like Adding 1.9 Million to the Bottom Line Every day(365 Days a Year)...Re-Occuring Revenue... Oh Ok...BroadBand is a Fad...

To: SLSUSMA who wrote (13666)	5/12/2000 2:52:00 PM
From: lorrie coey	1 Recommendation Respond to of 13953

Here in the hood, we went from TCI to ATT cable, and the CCBL 'thingies' are housed in their little green shelters all along the blvd...about every 200 feet or so...T is heavily promoting their presence and 'potential' for greatness w/a 'consumer choice' theme. So far, all I've noticed is a few bizarre happenings...perhaps it's a 'field testing' area here...lucky me. Anyway, what you're calling 'bad mgt'...could it be the influence of ATT, pushing to dominate the business...content and everything else...? I obviously don't quite get it...the whole convergence issue, hardware, cable, phone, etc...can you help me sort it out? It's hard to get the 'plain english' for the non-technically savvy... Thanks- ps. The Fleck has a story in his regular commentary regarding, "Don't Bank on it"...I've always considered all enterprises 'dotcom' to be 'virtual banks', and ECN's will be available to most individuals...[yes?] Where does this leave the not-quite-established-yet e-retailers/dotcoms...? Confused in Puddletown-

To: SLSUSMA who wrote (13666)	5/12/2000 4:07:00 PM
From: gpowell	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 13953

Cable is having problems once many, many users in your neighborhood signs up. DSL people are running a series of commercials to showcase this, which ATHM has threatened to sue over. You do realize that DSL is a shared medium. All DSL lines converge at a node located at the central office (CO). The lines are connected into individual modems, and at this point, the signals are multiplexed. These modems/multiplexors are referred to as Digital Subscriber Line Access Multiplexors (DSLAM). Some COs have as many as ten thousand phone lines converging. Many lines in - one line out. Each line feeds into a DSLAM and most of these DSLAMs are installed into standard 19" rack slots that house anywhere from 4 to 10 ports per slot. DSL suffers from both physical and bandwidth constraints. Because of the star topology of the telephone last mile network, it will be up to the RBOCs to create new COs to reduce the congestion. Do you really think the RBOCs will do this, just so Flashcom can make $79.95 a month? I doubt it. I have to wonder why some fool will pay $79.95 a month for a quarter of the bandwidth of a cable data service connection, which cost 39.95 a month. Consider, the MSOs will be providing 5 services via the HFC networks: Broadcast TV, Interactive TV, Telephone, Data Services, and Video on Demand. Currently, data services use approximately 6 MHz of the 750 to 1 GHz bandwidth of the HFC network. Do you really think that puny twisted pair telephone line can compete with that? So you think the cable modem will slow huh? The cost of splitting a node in the HFC topology is around $1500 dollars. Additionally, other 6 MHz channels can be allocated to data services. It really is no big deal. In Calgary (a city of approx 850,000 people), 50% of all residential Internet users use @HOME. There have been no reported complaints about slowing speeds. Those DSL ads you refer to, are airing only in areas where the MSOs are aggressively marketing the @home service. They are being used as a defensive, rearguard, action to prevent the loss of market share. The RBOCs know their only hope of competing with the HFC networks is to begin laying fiber into the neighborhoods. Therefore, they will not waste resources on an idea (DSL) whose time came and went 4 years ago - except where they must.