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

To: E. Davies who wrote (23938)	7/25/2000 9:17:13 PM
From: GraceZ	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 29970

the penetration into areas who have @home service available is 6.2%. I would be extremely disappointed if that is the kind of penetration we get long term. Wouldn't you? Isn't going to happen, so why even say it? Of course the penetration is going to go higher then it is now, a lot higher. My point about the local loops not being upgraded was that it wasn't the truck rolls holding the subs back it was the same old same old. Joe six pack hasn't stood up yet and demanded his @Home service....but don't worry, he will. (if my sample of friends are statistically relevant). All I've been talking about with people all freakin summer is "when are they going to get the @Home service in my neighborhood?" and "I know I have to get a better Internet connection, do you think I should get that cable thingie or the one the phone company is selling? Every where I got it is the same conversation....and I'm not the one that starts it either. ATHM will have roughly 50 million homes once they cut loose the international stuff. 6.2% would mean maxing out at just over 3 million subscribers in North America. Not exactly AOL on steroids. If ATHM maxes out on 3 million it is effectively dead. Ain't gonna happen. We'd have to have another Luddite movement to end all others to have it end there. Might they miss 3 million this year? It's a possibility. My best guess is 1.5 million people wake up in November and swear off their dialup connection and then all hell breaks loose to get them hooked up. It might be possible that the MSO's dragging their feet are the underlying cause of the weak subscriber growth. One possible issue is the number of areas that are being swapped because of the deals T made to clear the MediaOne acquisition. I know here in Baltimore City, the franchise is going from TCI to Comcast. These swaps are going on all over the country. I've seen the trucks upgrading in front of my studio, so it seems like they are still working in spite of the swap....but I bet they were deploying in territories that were going to stay with them first. Don't under-estimate that the rising gas prices and the falling stock market both left people feeling like they should pull in their horns. Broadband is a luxury right now and luxuries are the first thing people cut back on when they think they need to conserve. Aside from the fact that the majority of regular people don't spend a lot of time on the Internet in the spring and summer (unlike us addicts)so it won't occur to them to order @Home until the fall. I have friends that typically quit their ISP in the summer, as hard as that is to fathom here!