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Technology Stocks : America On-Line: will it survive ...? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jason Cogan who wrote (8822)	3/15/1998 11:37:00 AM
From: Dermot Burke	Respond to of 13594

Jason >> Also, does the MCI/WCOM relationship seem puzzling to anyone else but me? Isn't AOL now beholden to a competitor for the very connections that are it's lifeblood? >> Well maybe it has taken a long time to get to this point but now we finally have: A phone company 'bundling ' long distance service with cheaper dial-up -$14.95--to the web. A cynic might simply call this hedging by MCI-Worldcom. They get the AOL brokered dialup business plus the direct relationship with WWW customers. Sprint, of course has 30% of the very able direct dialup service earthlink.net

To: Jason Cogan who wrote (8822)	3/15/1998 12:53:00 PM
From: rhet0ric	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 13594

As for the technological issues, what's to stop AOL from rerouting their traffic through many rather than one location? How expensive do you estimate it would be to redesign their network? This is the single biggest question mark for me. I don't know the exact answer, but I know people who do know, and I plan to check with them. I'll post whatever I learn about it. My non-technical uninformed guess is: if AOL could route their Internet-to-AOL traffic through multiple points, they would have done it a long time ago. So there must be one of two reasons why they haven't: money, or technical. If money, they may be in a position to re-architect their network now, and that could account for their decision to up rates. If technical, i.e. if it's truly impossible to change the architecture no matter how much money they throw at it, then they're toast, imo. Also, does the MCI/WCOM relationship seem puzzling to anyone else but me? Isn't AOL now beholden to a competitor for the very connections that are it's lifeblood? MCO/WCOM is a diversified communications company with many revenue streams. It would be stupid for them in many ways to drop their AOL contract. For one thing, it would mean a loss in revenue that they can't expect to make up in other areas. For another thing, the WCOM/MCI merger is under government scrutiny because it's a potentially monopoly situation vis-a-vis ownership of the Internet backbone. Dropping AOL would confirm everyone's fears. (Imagine if Microsoft made PCs, too, and then decided to cut off its supply of OSs to Compaq. It would be like that). rhet0ric