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To: MGV who wrote (2736)	6/24/1998 5:07:00 PM
From: dougjn	Respond to of 11568

<<Nonetheless, strategically, doesnt TCI's cable give AT&T an opportunity to offer something closer to one stop shopping to business customers by giving T more of its own local capacity? >> The underlying concept w/r/t last mile communications is that pulling the wire is prohibitively expensive these days. Or at least very expensive. And time consuming. Cable is in over 70% of U.S. RESIDENCES, and passes I think something like 90%. By passes I mean that quite literally, it is a question of hooking up from the telephone pole to the home, only. Or from the apartment building stairwell. (Often not even that - just reconnecting or connecting already fully wired services.) Aside from bars, some trading offices, and some high level execs. offices, cable is in very few business offices. And I believe the infrastructure often is very thin in downtown and other business districts. Pulling those wires costs huge bucks and takes big time. Now I suppose someone can figure out how you bring T-1 service through cable to the office building basement, and then use existing (telco???) wiring from there, but I haven't seen that this is feasable. (I think the main issues are ownership of wires and regulatory, not technical. Though again, the CABLE pipes to the business districts are I think usually pretty darn thin.. I suppose we will hear of such if it is feasable soon, given this deal. Doug