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To: H James Morris who wrote (28838)	12/3/1998 9:57:00 PM
From: Glenn D. Rudolph	Respond to of 164684

Posted at 07:05 a.m. PST; Thursday, December 3, 1998 Internet stock valuations are excessive, says Gates by Bloomberg News NEW YORK - Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates may be a believer in the future of the Internet, but he said today's valuations of Internet stocks will be proven "excessive." Investors today have a mania for any company that opens a Web site to sell goods over the global computer network, he said at a forum sponsored by the Manhattan Institute, a New York-based think tank. Shares of companies such as clothing retailer Delias and music seller K-Tel, which have opened Web sites this year, have soared on investor enthusiasm for the Internet. Still, society will develop a "Web workstyle" once electronic mail and online services become a mass-market phenomenon and computer screens and software become easier to use, Gates said. "Reading off the screen is still vastly inferior to reading off paper," he said. The Web lifestyle is emerging in a few college campuses, he said, where the course directories are published online and students are connected by high-speed networks. One obstacle to the Internet becoming more widely used is the lack of high-speed bandwidth, or the ability for phone lines and cable lines to carry large amounts of data at fast speeds, he said. "If there's any cloud on the horizon, it's the ability to provide high-speed access for everyone." Low-Earth orbit satellites that can transmit high-speed Internet access across the globe will prove to be a solution to the problem, he said. "There are a number of companies, including one that I'm involved in, to get satellites up," he said. Teledesic, which is building a global-communications satellite system, is backed by Gates, cellular phone pioneer Craig McCaw, Saudi Arabian billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, Motorola and Boeing. seattletimes.com