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Technology Stocks : AUTOHOME, Inc -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Hiram Walker who wrote (2459)	7/13/1998 8:23:00 AM
From: Hiram Walker	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 29970

Another article on Tacoma. msnbc.com TCI considered ClickNetwork enough of a threat that Leo Hindery, president of the $7.6 billion cable powerhouse and a Tacoma native, traveled to his old hometown last October to lobby against it. The visit did not go well. Hindery's first meeting deteriorated into an ugly shouting match when Tacoma City Council members ripped TCI for what they considered its history of abysmal service. And Hindery's offer to work with Tacoma Power (then called Tacoma City Light) and upgrade TCI's cable system to meet the needs of both the city and the utility was disregarded as too little, too late. "Leo looked us in the eye and said, 'I understand there have been broken promises. I understand there have been a lot of tears. I'm here to make things right,' " recalls city council member Bill Baarsma. "But to have that discussion on the day of the vote created really an impossible situation for us." So far most of the new municipal utility cable projects have been built in small, often remote towns. But if the Tacoma project does well, big cities are likely to jump into the fray as well. If that happens, conflicts with the cable industry are sure to grow in intensity. "If you're a small municipality, it's likely you can do this and not incite the wrath of the cable industry," Tournier says, "but you will see very bitter fights in any large cities where a municipal systems tries to introduce cable service. The existing companies will fight them tooth and nail." Deb Stewart, a 20-year cable industry veteran recruited to run the show, has pushed an aggressive build-out schedule. An official launch date is not set, but Stewart says cable service will be available to selected Tacoma neighborhoods in a few weeks, and all 200,000 residents will have access to both cable and high-speed Internet access from ClickNetwork by the end of 1999. From the outset the network will offer somewhere between 75 and 85 channels of video programming. Until recently TCI's 50,000 customers in Tacoma have received just 40 channels, but TCI spokesman Steven Kipp says the company is spending "tens of millions of dollars" on upgrades in Tacoma that are boosting capacity to around 70 channels. The upgrades have reached about 20,000 customers so far and should hit the rest by the end of the year. TCI is also beta-testing the At Home high-speed Internet access service in Tacoma and should start rolling it out in the fall. Stewart says ClickNetwork will begin offering high-speed Web surfing capabilities at roughly the same time. Stewart refused to disclose pricing for either service, but says they will be "extremely competitive" with TCI. Hiram