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

To: Harry Larson who wrote (9130)	3/30/1998 3:51:00 PM
From: rhet0ric	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 13594

presto, AOL is a big business ISP. Businesses are converting to TCP/IP. The main AOL network is not TCP/IP. AOL can sell daytime space on its modem racks to access the Internet, but that would be separate from the rest of the AOL network. And, as you point out, AOL doesn't run its physical network any more, so I don't see how they can do that (although the companies that do own the modems and network can, and do, resell the service). If AOL is expecting business customers to go through their regular network, they're in for a tough sell. For instance, all AOL-to-Internet traffic goes through proxy servers. This means business sites that use IP addresses for security filtering will reject them. Businesses that need good security will not sign up for AOL. Performance is another issue. AOL is whatever it says it is today. If you're saying that AOL is masterful at PR and marketing, you're right. But if the difference between the marketing and the reality becomes too great, the reality will start to take over. rhet0ric

To: Harry Larson who wrote (9130)	3/30/1998 10:42:00 PM
From: Investor-ex!	Respond to of 13594

Harry, Good observation, sell off the in-house infrastructure expertise necessary to enable world-class, mission-critical internet access and then turn around and offer world-class, mission-critical internet access without any in-house infrastructure expertise. A while back I believe I came across a posting/article where most businesses much prefer to stay as local as possible when buying internet access. They want round-the-clock, on-demand, immediate, on-site (when necessary) support. They prefer to deal with specialists, too, not generalists. One would think AOL has its hands full trying to attend to its consumer clients. Thus, I'm led to speculate, "What's up with that"? Marginally Plausible Explanation #1: AOL's day vs. evening usage of its leased bandwidth is becoming so skewed toward the latter that they simply must do something to spread the costs. In other words, their average evening usage is growing rapidly, which, as they've stated in the past, costs them. Marginally Plausible Explanation #2: AOL sees a not too distant fall-off in retail client growth and needs another engine to tap, just in case. Either (or neither) way, $21.95, starts in 2 days -- in advance please...