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To: MikeM54321 who wrote (1748)	7/30/1998 7:18:00 PM
From: DenverTechie	Respond to of 12823

What you are seeing is the continuation of a consolidation trend in the cable industry that started in the late eighties. This just happens to coincide with the availability of analog fiber optic systems to transport video. With the realization that future growth and revenue enhancement are dependent on fiber upgrades and reverse path activation to create the HFC network, smaller operators realized and are still realizing it will take large capital investments to get there, so they sell out (Charter at 14 times cash flow is a good example). The ability to provide advanced services like cable modems and telephony also leads to a "clustering" strategy where the economies of scale come into play if you have very large contiguous operating areas. Time Warner Cable recognized this many years ago and has pursued this strategy with a passion. So smaller operators avoid the costs of upgrading, while the big players build their clusters and upgrade the networks with access to large amounts of capitals. When you think about it, it all makes sense. Yes, these people are betting large on cable/HFC, not to mention AT&T buying TCI (how did we forget that one?). Cable is not merely the analog video entertainment distribution systems once HFC is in place and reverse has been activated. It becomes a total communications platform, with a lot of bandwidth available. With satellite DBS taking an ever larger piece of the video distribution market, that becomes very important down the line.