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Technology Stocks : LAST MILE TECHNOLOGIES - Let's Discuss Them Here -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: axial who wrote (8812)	10/8/2000 3:28:34 PM
From: justone	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 12823

Jim: I read the article about Mike Armstrong, and have some problems with it. "ATT is dead". The writer acts like this is news. Ma bell died years ago. ATT over the last 10 years was a successful long distance company with a bad culture that needs some new market as fiber destroys the long distance rate structure. Mike came up with the only idea that makes sense. I believe the board will stick with him, since he is doing what they hired him to do. They may play market games with the stock, but he won't jeopardize the core strategy. Now the only fly in the ointment might be John Malone, chairman of AT&T-owned Liberty Media; John has a lot of stock and clout. But right now John Malone is "eating Microsoft's lunch" in the vital set top OS market. For him, ATT's strategy for cable voice needs to work, and work quickly, so I don't see John being anything but Mike's supporter, unless he is putting ego or some kind of grudge over a good strategy. Of course, John may, as some have suggested, still care about money today. He may want to drop out of the OS market and get into something else right now. ATT's stock being so low must annoy him, as he owns so much, but I suspect he has other ways of raising cash if he needed it. I don't think Money is a driver for him- he is doing a lot of needed good work at Yale by donating money (700 million I think) for engineering to that technology challenged backward school, and trying to bring them into the 20th century in engineering (and maybe the 21st as well). I don't really know either of these men- I'm just looking at strategies- but they are both smart and will no doubt figure a way out to deploy cable with fiber carrying voice, data, tv, and interactive services. They they will be really wealthy and successful, as opposed to being, well, really wealthy and successful.