Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

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

To: toothid who wrote (4039)	1/9/1999 11:32:00 PM
From: Frank A. Coluccio	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 29970

Dr. Filippi, Apologies are in order here, I'm afraid. I mistakenly looked for your earlier post to me in the RCN thread, for some reason, and couldn't find it. Oh well... >>I am wondering if you follow a company called RCN tecknology. RCNC. A spin off company of L-3. My question. << Yes, I follow them. RCN and LVLT are linked financially and through other structural means, I believe. And yes, LVLT owns a considerable piece of RCN. ~20%, I believe. Correct me if I'm wrong about this. >>How do you think it compares to ATHM. RCNC is active in the East coast--Boston area. High density market interest<< Some of the answers to these distinctions are now embedded in the crux of my now infamous upstream post #4023: Message 7192486 ....although I wasn't highlighting the contrast between RCN and ATHM there, per se. --- ATHM is an ISP which is building its own internal backbone. It lacks the physical lines to get to its customers, so it uses the outside plant provisions of its owners and partners, namely those of approximately 18 or so MSOs (multiple system operators). RCN, on the other hand, is , or let's say was, primarily a facilities-based cable TV provider, although they have gopne through the routine of becoming a competitive local exchange carrier or CLEC, and more recently an Integrated Communications Provider, or ICP, (per Chairman McCourt's interview last week on CNBC). They claim the ability to do it all. In effect, RCN is actually delivering in some areas all of the things that ATHM and T and TCOMA and the other MSOs in the alliance want to deliver. And that is to provide all four basic service groups over the same pipe: - Voice telephony, - Program TV Video, - Internet Access, and - (all other) data services. Through its ownership of Erols and a few others, RCN also fills the ISP space in the Northeast, primarily, in a way similar to ATHM's ISP presence. BTW, Does anyone know if RCN allows connections to ISPs other than their own? Curious. ATHM, in contrast, is only the Internet Service Provider component of such a mix. This will remain true until they are empowered at some point to independently deliver the other three of the four in the mix... but that is the conflict that I alluded to earlier. They can't at this time deliver all four groups. It would bend their owners' noses entirely out of joint. --- As an aside, perhaps it's unfair to pigeon-hole ATHM solely as an ISP, since they seem to be evolving into a class of their own due to their architectural attributes and their scope of offerings. In another era Compuserve and Prodigy (and even AOL prior to the web craze) had (and still has) a similar structure, when you consider their backbone makeups and closed user groups with gateways to the Internet. Maybe they should not be considered an ISP in the traditional sense. Comments welcome. Regards, Frank Coluccio