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Technology Stocks : LAST MILE TECHNOLOGIES - Let's Discuss Them Here -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: MikeM54321 who wrote (2156)	10/15/1998 7:40:00 PM
From: DenverTechie	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 12823

Having worked on Time Warner's team for a few years, I am not surprised by this statement. Mr. Levin has been working on this kind of deal "in the near term" since 1994. At that time, a deal was in place with AT&T and we actually had a set of specifications from AT&T as to what the RF characteristics of the plant had to be to satisfy their telephone network demands. The "definite deal" fell apart later that year, and TW has been trying to do another one ever since. Mr. Levin is a master at playing the press and I know he has been getting heat over the AT&T/TCI deal. So this statement is a flanking maneuver to keep the TW stock price up and the dogs at bay. Also, notice he said "expects a telephone deal with a company he didn't identify"..... He didn't say a deal with a telephone company but a telephone deal with a company. Big difference there. He picked his words very carefully so it's probably not a traditional telephone company. Just speculation though if I read too much into his words -- if AT&T were to do a deal with Time Warner, having already put together a deal with TCI, AT&T would have cable connectivity to something like 70% of all cable passed homes in the US. But Levin will not sell TW to AT&T outright like TCI got sold. Levin will never do that due to the complexities of the US West partnership and the multitude of obscenely profitable entertainment properties they own. He could divest TW Cable by itself, but that is still sticky due to the US West problem. And I don't think it's America Online either. That wouldn't make much sense with the success of RoadRunner to date. A deal with AOL would cannibalize RoadRunner too much, unless AOL were to purchase RoadRunner and fold it all in. But that's not really a telephone deal, now is it? That would be a data deal. It could be just a simple partnership/right to use deal for capacity on their cable lines. Good for TW, not great for the partner, which is why this has been taking so long to come to fruition. When it comes right down to it, Levin HATES giving up CONTROL of ANYTHING. My gut feeling on this is that if a deal is done, it will be a complete surprise as to who it is with, not any of the obvious players.