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Technology Stocks : Winstar Comm. (WCII) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: MangoBoy who wrote (3587)	1/28/1998 4:16:00 PM
From: Steven Bowen	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 12468

" (hopefully) a precursor to selling or spinning off this business? " Why do you say this? I have high hopes for this division. They are growing fast and already reporting significant revenue. I think New Media can be a very important piece of the future.

To: MangoBoy who wrote (3587)	1/28/1998 4:21:00 PM
From: TheSlowLane	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 12468

I don't think there are any plans to sell this off and I'm unclear as to why you are so eager to see it happen. They acquired Telebase in September '97 and are just coming out with a WinStar-branded version of the Telebase offerings so I'd have to doubt that a spinoff is in the works. If anything, I'd expect to see more emphasis on content-related businesses (such as New Media) over time, not less.

To: MangoBoy who wrote (3587)	1/29/1998 5:06:00 AM
From: Roger Bass	Respond to of 12468

I kind of agree both with you, and the other responses. I do think that the information services business is somewhat complementary to the broadband comms business, in that it creates demand for the bandwidth and (inversely), broadband customers are the right market for targetting broadband services at (obviously!) I think it will be some time (a year or two) before the internet backbone gets to the point that broadband services from any site on the net will work as well as services provided by the provider who delivers the broadband local loop. I also agree that it is likely to account for an increasing proportion of sales and However, if they went as far as getting a separate quotation for the new media business, it could help the valuation in being easier for the Street to value, and by making the businesses more separable for a pure-telecoms acquirer, say. (That said, I'd be surprised to see that happen any time soon). BTW: on the broadband service/bandwidth linkup, I've been idly wondering whether @Home or anyone else has a chance of getting some scale in creating the infrastructure for delivering broadband services more widely, independently of any questions about whether wireless, ADSL or cable modems win. (@Home is 70% owned by TCI, so unless the rumoured $1bn AT&T investment happens, they may be staying focused on cable only). With players like Winstar New Media, Source Media (one of WCII's partners) and @Home, it seems to me that the broadband online services market is kind of where online services were 3-5 years ago : ie relatively vertically integrated. Interesting to think about who will win as this evolves towards an open, broadband internet and broadband service content publishers & concentrators.