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

To: RocketMan who wrote (4027)	1/9/1999 10:01:00 PM
From: Jay Lowe	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 29970

>> trying to leverage high-speed <stuff> by striking relationships Nicely put, RocketMan ... My most general question is ... How can ATHM leverage it's position into various revenue streams? The answer is inherently complex: -- What are the revenue streams? -- How do they come and go as a function of time, events, trends? -- Does the integral of these trends appear to be a successful pattern? For example, one possible revenue source is related to VoIP. How will ATHM make money off the VoIP phenomena? There are various answers ... some of which lead them making a LOT of money ... some of which lead to making very little. The future consists of waves of such phenomena ... can ATHM utilize and integrate these waves into their success? ATHM's advantage (like AOL's) is their middle position between the customer and the value-provider ... they are, to use a military metaphor, deployed on "interior lines". They are in a very good position to do so at the current time ... which is why I'm bullish on their near and middle term success. They face various challenges ... AOL (etc) must formulate a response, there are possible conflicts of interest in the T relationship, DSL is going to serve the other half of the customer base (I hold DSL stocks too), ATHM must incorporate DSL in some sense (by parent relationship?) or be in conflict with it. What an interesting time this is!

To: RocketMan who wrote (4027)	1/10/1999 12:22:00 AM
From: Frank A. Coluccio	Respond to of 29970

RocketMan, I can't blame those who've recently placed great sums into this play for being defensive. We're talking a lot of dough here and high stakes. One of the problems I see with any alliance like this one is the potential for pullouts and eventual breakage due to mergers and acquisitions. We've seen this many times and we don't have to look too far back in history for precedents. The most recently affecting the ownership denominations of TCG by the MSOs, and the Sprint 360 wireless arrangement with same. Sure, it would be excellent for ATHM to be able to leverage all of the provisions of its partners, as ahhaha stated to me in the preceding post. It would be even better if this were done under one roof instead of the roofs of many. In the SEC snippet you posted: >>allows residential subscribers to connect their personal computers via cable modems to a high-speed Internet backbone network developed and managed by the Company."<< I take that to mean, literally, the backbone that they developed. Not the access provisions. And if it was their intent to imply that the access provisions were developed by ATHM, then they would be mistaken, IMO. >>So ATHM is a little bit of an ISP, a little bit of an infrastructure provider/developer, and a little bit of a Portal (which they call @Media), trying to leverage its high-speed servers, routers, and growing backbone by striking relationships with as many regional cable companies as possible -- 18 so far in North Americal and Europe, according to their SEC filing. << This is way too uncanny, RM. I just finished spelling out the same thing, almost verbatim in spots, to Dr. Filippi. >>I don't know how you would define an access company. But if you look at AOL, or most other ISP/Portals, they all depend on external partners, from leasing backbone bandwidth to partnering with content providers.<< That's true. And I wouldn't consider AOL or the other ISPs as access companies either. But the access companies that they do use do not provide "exclusive arrangements" to AOL or to IDT or whomever. One of the things that characterizes an access company in its charter is the responsibility to provide common carriage to the world at large. So, to that extent, not even the MSOs serving ATHM qualify as true access companies yet. They are providing a closed service to a single ISP in most cases. Or am I wrong about this? Do any of the partnering MSOs also provide their customers with access to ISPs other than ATHM? If so, who are they? Do you know? --- Slightly off topic, but I thought I'd throw it in here: Note that T is formalizing an ever growing number of "partnering" arrangements with other large cable system operators. Where does this lead, and how far can they take it? If it leads to an eventual takeout of most or all of them, then that's one thing, and I see both the merit and the detriment to it, depending on which ones they go after. If, on the other hand, this is T's intent but they get blocked by DOJ in the last of the ninth, then that's something else altogether. Every play that T makes has an end game associated with it. What is it here? Any thoughts?

To: RocketMan who wrote (4027)	1/10/1999 6:07:00 PM
From: H Adams	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 29970

Rocketman, I am new to ATHM. I bought the stock after I purchased my cable modem service from Time Warner about a week ago. Time Warner's service is called Road Runner. I thought ATHM would be more of a pure internet play than Time Warner because of Time's involvement in other areas. What are your thoughts on Roadrunner vs. ATHM? By the way, they do use Motorola's modem. I read earlier that Cox was using them too. What do you think about Motorola as a play in the growing cable modem market? Thanks for you thoughts Hadams