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Technology Stocks : America On-Line: will it survive ...? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jorge who wrote (12390)	12/7/1998 8:06:00 PM
From: RocketMan	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 13594

I hope you and Benjamin are right. I've followed some of those rumors as well, and along with others I was surprised when they announced the Netscape deal instead of a cable partnership. But then, Case has brought this company a long way, and who am I to outguess him? You can argue that the Netscape/SUN deal gives AOL the opportunity to penetrate the business market and to pursue their plan for "AOL everywhere" or whatever they call it. Bandwidth is critical, but it might be a longer term issue than business penetration. From what I have seen, cable and DSL penetration is not expected to be more than 25% of the market by 2002, so there is time for AOL to work out something with ATHM or other bandwidth provider, but Netscape is there now for the taking. So let's see what develops.

To: Jorge who wrote (12390)	12/8/1998 7:37:00 AM
From: James	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 13594

<<...that nagging little issue of bandwidth.>> Jorge, I agree with you that this issue will be looked after shortly. However, this is NOT an issue as far as AOL's top & bottom lines. Regardless of the trend to increased bandwidth, through cable modems, AOL's top & bottom lines WILL grow tremendously over the next 18-24 months. Sometime during this period, or shortly after, AOL's management will finally decide to leverage their 15-20 million (#'s by that time) subscribers, and merge with AT&T/TCI. As you may, or may not know, TCI, which will soon be part of AT&T owns a large chunk of the @home network. If that doesn't happen, look for something to happen with AOL and Roadrunner, a MSFT investment. Bottom line, ANY WAY YOU LOOK AT AOL...IT IS THE END WINNER. 15-20 MILLION subscribers is simply overpowering leverage, which AOL will take full advantage of. JMHO, James