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

To: ftth who wrote (3878)	1/6/1999 1:36:00 AM
From: E. Davies	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 29970

First I agree that its very odd that they claim the new network to be 100x the current one and able to support 5 million users. That implies they can only support 50,000 users now! But in calculating your 100kb/sec/user it's critical to realize that this is a network. Not all users are active at the same time and not all data flows through the same wire. The enhancement of the ATHM network always brings me back to the arguments I have with people about ATHM's present & future competition. A broadband ISP is not about the data rate presented to the user. Broadband is about a national high speed network that bypasses the bottlenecks of the internet backbone. Otherwise you have a ferrari forced to drive at 20mph in rush hour traffic. Why doesnt anybody get this? Who else has 100 million dollars to build a national/global broadband network? WCOM & AOL maybe (& AT&T), I'm sure there are a few others. People are afraid of "roll your own" cable and DSL. Where are these people going to get the network? What do xDSL providers do now? Do they lie to the users and just connect in to an overcrowded local POP or do they rent broadband from someone else? Why couldnt that someone else be ATHM? It has always seemed to me that ATHM's real competition is probably not the RBOC's, but more likely WCOM. Am I totally off base or is everyone else? Eric