Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

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

To: silicon warrior who wrote (5718)	5/5/1998 9:13:00 AM
From: James Fink	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 12468

To all those who say that high-speed cable modems are not a competitive threat to WinStar's offerings in the business market, I offer the following article. See the last paragraph in particular: Cable TV Forms Group To Advance Internet By Judith Crosson May 5, 1998 DENVER (Reuters) - The cable television industry, hoping to fend off competition from telephone companies, has formed a group to convince customers that high-speed cable is the best way to get on the Internet, executives said. Today, a group of cable, software, hardware and content providers are using the National Cable Television Association convention in Atlanta to announce they have formed the Cable Broadband Forum Inc. The group wants to sell the public on using the Internet via a high-speed cable hook-up rather than the telephone line. "With more pictures, video stream and audio stream being offered, there's a need for a high-speed access," said Tom Cullen, vice president of Internet Services for MediaOne and chairman of the board of the new group. The new service means more speed for users and more revenue for the cable industry, which has been upgrading its systems. Some 200,000 customers nationwide have signed up for high- speed cable and about 1,000 join each day. But with a goal of having 1 million customers by the end of this year, the industry has to do better, industry sources say. The Internet has taken off in the past few years. Some 50 million people use it and nearly 25 million households are connected to the Internet, Cullen said. While more users get on the Internet every day, the experience can be frustrating. With current dial-up modems, a user can tie up a telephone line for lengthy minutes at a time just to pull down jazzy graphics. It can take hours to download software. To combat delays, regional telephone companies are also promising to deliver high-speed Internet access with their own technology. So cable companies see a need to get their message out quickly. "It's a battle for mind-share," said Robert Davenport, senior vice president and chief operating officer of TCI.NET, a unit of cable giant Englewood, Colo.-based Tele-Communications Inc. "The focus is to raise the level of awareness," Davenport said of the new nonprofit organization, whose diverse membership includes cable operators TCI, MediaOne, Cox and Time Warner Cable. Microsoft, Intel and Lucent Technologies also have joined the group, as well as Scientific-Atlanta and General Instrument. "The phone companies have been pretty aggressive in talking about what they have in mind," Davenport said. For about $40 extra a month, a cable customer can subscribe to the high-speed service. Business customers are also a target, and the group wants to persuade businesses that cable is the superior delivery for enterprise-wide business applications such as telecommuting through virtual private networks, so-called called corporate Intranets and electronic commerce.