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Technology Stocks : PSIX up 26.5%, Takeover(?) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Teknvstr who wrote (1976)	2/9/1998 10:45:00 PM
From: bob zagorin	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 5650

i like it tek. and i do think the aol price rise is good for psi. there is a price point where individuals with businesses make the decision with whom to set up a web site. if they're serious, they're likely to choose someone like psi because aol has never been reliable enough to trust your business to. so psi can also raise its rates a little because that price point has now moved up a notch. as long time aol subscriber, i would gladly pay the $2 extra if they can take care of their business. almost every time I'm on the network locks up somewhere. it might be their software but their tech support is negligible.

To: Teknvstr who wrote (1976)	2/9/1998 11:02:00 PM
From: Oeconomicus	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 5650

I don't know if you are being facetious or not Tek, a slightly sarcastic reference to the boost that MSPG (and others) got from AOL's announcement today (10% today also). I don't own any PSIX, so no bitterness here, but I have been following it. It does seem to me that MSPG has proved the "a consumer ISP can never make money" crowd dead wrong, but that doesn't mean the business side can't work eventually. The interesting thing about the AOL news is that they are admitting two important things. First, they can't make money at current rates as average usage (hours) rises; and second, they can't make it up with advertising and web commerce revenues. In other words, a flawed business model. The "also-ran" ISPs like MSPG appear to have a better model and can grab more market from AOL by undercutting prices and still make more money off the same consumer subscribers. Regards, Bob PS: I sold my MSPG a (relatively) long time ago, last fall around $21. Ain't that a kick in the head?

To: Teknvstr who wrote (1976)	2/9/1998 11:24:00 PM
From: david thor	Respond to of 5650

Tek, <... but it's a little early to tell if business customers will be getting rate increases as well, but I can see it happening> A big problem for AOL (and the cellular phone business, incidentally) is the subscriber churn rate. Would you happen to have seen any articles on what the business internet churn rate is compared to consumer? I would say the consumer dollar is a lot more fickle than the business dollar, but I haven't seen anything in writing to that affect. Somewhere, about a year ago, I saw something that indicated AOL spent something like $125 to attain one subscriber - I'm pretty sure of that figure. Thanks, Dave