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To: Profi who wrote (2408)	7/8/1998 8:41:00 PM
From: Frank A. Coluccio	Respond to of 29970

Profi, You ask, > any comments about the disadvantages of a one way service (other than having to keep a second phone line which I already have) would be appreciated..< THe most notable other disadvantage is that your speed upstream may be severely limited at some point. For normal WWW surfing, you probably would not notice the difference. But if you are a telecommuter with a need for uploading large files to the office, or if you want to engage in video conferencing at some point for any reason whatsoever, the upstream bandwidth limitation would be felt. Regards, Frank C.

To: Profi who wrote (2408)	7/8/1998 8:51:00 PM
From: ahhaha	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 29970

Why does it look like other companies are jumping into the market? Can you name one such? You might read the white paper available at ATHM's web site. It isn't important to understand the distribution system either for your personal use or for investment purposes. You may have read various posts on this thread of people who love AOL. That is inconceivable to me. Their content and presentation is a bother and irritation to the way I use the internet, but I respect that others don't have the same usage style or technological background, so I must respect that others can be enamored with AOL. This is branding. Cable operators can offer their own bundled set of broadband services including digital tv and telephony, but that would be unrealistic. Why not partner with an established provider like ATHM and let them worry about the components of content and all the other details of sophisticated delivery? No doubt you don't then have the flexibility that might optimize your own content selection relative to your subscriber base, but the difference isn't worth the large investment it would take to roll your own. There are big new operating costs too. Better to just accept the popular brand. I won't go into the technological superiority of ATHM's distribution system, but nobody else comes close. When transfer speeds rise to 20 - 30 mbps, you won't see anyone but ATHM in the local loop. But then you won't see this HFC junk either. It will be pure fiber and T will pull it. Pure fiber relegates the caching server to intermittent backbone assistance or extinction. So the advantage of ATHM is speed, reliability, and eventually, the primo content, that is, the content that needs the superior delivery system to work and later the content that will be exclusively presented through ATHM. The second phone line dedicated to upstream is impossible to coordinate. I can't even see it if you only did downloads. You still have to initiate at 28.8 through the often off copper phone lines. The only reason the one way service exists is that your service area hasn't been pulled to HFC; it's still raw coax. That will change soon once the cable operators see that this ATHM type stuff is what people want. I wouldn't even take a free high speed one-way with 28.8 up. I'd wait until ATHM is available. No, not even to download movies, VOD.