Cramer thinks DSL rollout SUCKS!!! He is right, but he really does not understand the significance or the technology -- where it is going and how implementation will be facilitated by fiber remotes. He is just beginning to comprehend what is going on. The last paragraph is the most important for us investors:
thestreet.com
Figuring Out Fast Access: Part 1
By James J. Cramer
6/16/00 6:13 AM ET
Editor's note: This is the introduction to a week-long series by James J. Cramer on how to
make money in the stocks of companies that provide high-speed access to the Internet.
Cramer's observations and conclusions are, in part, based on a recent poll of
subscribers' experiences with these providers. (The poll was conducted in one of
Cramer's previous columns.) Read on and enjoy the series!
We've got this dot-com thing all wrong. Every e-tailing and e-service site I know has the same
goal: to make it easier, cheaper and faster for the customer to get something. But we don't
have a site that allows someone else to be the customer instead of us. That's right, a site that
says, "Welcome, Jim Cramer! For the next two months, Matt e-Jacobs will be your shopping
alter-ego while you do your job, run your life and be a dad."
Ahh, but you say, "I like being the customer. That's a privileged status!" You like buying, you
like purchasing, you like getting things done. Who would want an alter-ego to make those
decisions for you?
The answer, unfortunately, is every single person in this country who wants high-speed
access to the Net. Because whether you live in a city or in the country, whether you live
within 50 feet of a Bell Atlantic (BEL:NYSE - news) central office or in the wilds of
Montana, whether you are rich or poor, whether you work at Cisco (CSCO:Nasdaq - news)
or are unemployed, you will be made miserable by this process. You will want someone else
to be put through this grueling, grinding gauntlet.
It would be the ultimate dot-com, this "I-will-procure-your-fast-Net-access" dot-com, because
I can't recall any other horrible event that has brought consumers together in this way, with
the possible exception of the creation of the Internal Revenue Service.
The above three paragraphs are the longest I have ever gone in the cyber-pages of
TheStreet.com without mentioning a specific stock, but I have read through thousands of
your responses to my DSL/cable survey and am awestruck at the torture we have all been
put through by these companies designed to make the Web experience faster and better. The
lost man hours, the irritation, the anger and the frustration have percolated into a torrent. It's
amazing that the anger over this issue hasn't bubbled to a level where the politicians are
demanding action -- and that customers continue to endure the nightmare without resorting to
violence. I wish I could say I were kidding.
And yet the customers sign up, lured by false promises of easy installation and fool-proof
service made by people who should know better. The purveyors know the truth: The
technology sucks; it is all stopgap; it is a nightmare to install and installation procedures vary
from house to house.
They are selling a wrinkle-free, men's 38 regular suit for 50 bucks and trying to fit you into it.
They tell you it fits you before you try it on. They tell you in the mail. They tell you in the
papers. They tell you online. They beg you to take it.
But they can't deliver.
It's a beautiful suit they are offering, all right, but they are not tailors. They are not even
clothiers! They are delivery men who have been taught basic alterations. And they aren't
there to please you. They have been dispatched, not by designers and salesmen with a
sharp eye for what you want, but by blind people who see nothing of what you look like and
know nothing about you.
Nothing fits.
And yet you can't say no. You need this product. For the longest time, it was priced
unrealistically, and you made do with what you had. But you are sick of what you have. Now
you want what the other guy has. So you sign up and you pay the price: your time and your
sanity.
And you are doing so in record numbers, with a speed that makes it quite obvious that
someone is making money, someone is making a fortune in this process. You are determined
to game it, to figure it out and to get something back from the experience, because that is the
American way of profit.
Which brings me to this series. When I started this thing, which was, as you shall see,
inspired by my own private hell with DSL in New Jersey, I had no idea what was going on. I
had no idea that this nightmare had come to fruition on a national scale when the price of DSL
was lowered throughout the country all at once.
I had thought it was going to be like ISDN or T-1, something nobody made two bucks off of in
the market. I had thought it was just one more uninvestable idea.
But the more I read your emails and pored through the survey data, the more I realized that
we are at an inflection point where some serious money is being made. So let's make it
together, over the course of the next week. The series will encompass why the theme is a
good one, how to make money on it, how to not to make money on it -- and it will end with a
list of high-speed Net providers who are clear winners and losers, available first in the
cyber-pages of RealMoney.com. (I bet you will know which are which long before the
series is over!) So, no more waiting; I am not Bell Atlantic.
Let's get on with it.
All the best,
Michael |
