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

To: ERM who wrote (2964)	10/26/1998 3:30:00 PM
From: UFGator93	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 29970

ATHM filled it's 44 3/8 -- 44 1/8 gap today. So, hopefully it can start heading down (for a change :) now!

To: ERM who wrote (2964)	10/26/1998 7:42:00 PM
From: ahhaha	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 29970

If the cable operator is to provide a separate channel for AOL, then they must do the same for Road Runner, Mindspring, Earthlink, every ISP there is. Thousands. Since that can't be done, no separate channels. There are many other technological and infrastructure reasons why this isn't possible. Assume the channels are provided for a select few. Then there is no way to prevent local to long distance telephony and there is no way to prevent RBOCs from breaking out of their FCC unconstitutional anti-competitive interpretation of the '96 Act imprisonment. Each RBOC just buys one of the few entitled ISPs, and sets up the local to long machinery. How does the FCC enforce the current interpretation? Common carrier status relative to what? Copper wire local telephony? Broadband is not in that category. Build an FCC mandated fire wall between telephony and broadband and AOL is fenced out. TCI simply has no alternative but to go it alone if necessary because they will go broke if they are stuck with providing cable tv only. Cox is continuing to proceed with their build-out regardless. Ditto Rogers and Shaw. Comcast is still in denial. I will repeat. The decades of maintaining the anti-competitive attitude of hiding behind the public's screaming for protection has created a circumstance such that MSOs can't make money. They can only become more indebted and more decrepit. They must break out of this comfortable prison by seeking new markets. You say, "open up cable plant to all comers". What does that mean? You think it is meaningful but you forget that cable and copper are different plant. If copper ISPs want to distribute broadband, they must use the MSO premises. Since they can't use the existing system of local distribution because it is under ATHM's patent, they must provide their own distribution equipment. Common carrier status gives them the right to use the wire, but it doesn't give them the right to use the model of distribution. ATHM's technological advantage is the Medin local replication. That idea does not exist in copper ISP distribution and so substantially the same declarations won't supersede patent jurisdiction. The cable operator can't transmit efficient broadband without the ATHM model, so ATHM still must receive compensation because the MSO is using the patented idea too. What's happening in Phoenix is the discovery of dead end technologies. In other words nothing is happening, but a lot of people are going to be disappointed. These expensive inadequate distribution systems don't raise any boats. They just fool people into screaming for more protection.