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Technology Stocks : Westell WSTL -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dug who wrote (14665)	1/13/1999 8:19:00 PM
From: Michael F. Donadio	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 21342

Dug, GREAT NEWS ON Bell Atlantic & AOL: biz.yahoo.com This should affect Westell. Wednesday January 13, 7:30 pm Eastern Time FOCUS - AOL, Baby Bell in high-speed Internet plan (adds details throughout, adds analyst comments, stock price, changes dateline from DULLES) By Eric Auchard NEW YORK, Jan 13 (Reuters) - America Online Inc. (NYSE:AOL - news) and U.S. local phone giant Bell Atlantic Corp. (NYSE:BEL - news) on Wednesday said they agreed to form an alliance offering high-speed Internet access over Bell phone lines, a move marking AOL's entry into the broadband Internet access market. In a statement, AOL said it would offer Bell Atlantic's Infospeed DSL access as a premium upgrade to AOL's standard Internet service in Bell Atlantic's local region, which covers the Eastern seaboard from Maine to Virginia. The program, due to be launched this summer, would be AOL's first commercial offer of high-speed Internet access. AOL also is in national tests of high-speed services with MCI WorldCom Inc. (Nasdaq:WCOM - news) and GTE Corp. (NYSE:GTE - news), a spokeswoman said. Such broadband Internet services allow consumers to connect to the Internet at far faster speeds than so-called ''dial-up'' modem services that require users to sign on and off of the Internet and which operate at far slower connection rates. Analysts said they expected America Online to announce similar deals in coming months, allowing AOL to begin offering high-speed Internet access around the nation later this year. ''AOL's goal is clearly to have the whole nation covered,'' said Arthur Newman, a securities analyst with brokerage firm Gerard Klauer Mattison. Bell Atlantic is retrofiting its existing phone network with technology that links computer users to the Internet at speeds of up to 640 kilobits per second, or more than 20 times faster than the dial-up connections most AOL members now use. The companies said the new high-speed Internet service will be available in major Bell Atlantic markets as the technology is put in place, with 7.5 million homes covered by the end of 1999, and more than 14 million by the end of the year 2000. AOL has more than 15 million subscribers worldwide, roughly 13 million of whom reside in the United States. AOL could deliver a range of audio and video programming now impractical to deliver over slow-speed lines, while keeping users constantly connected to the Internet. The service would also allow subscribers to use phones or faxes simultaneously. ''That's something you can only do in an office with a high-speed connection,'' Newman said. ''Now you will be able to do that from home,'' he said. The high-speed service over phone lines would put AOL in more direct competition with At Home Corp. (Nasdaq:ATHM - news), a national supplier of broadband Internet programming using cable TV networks and high-speed cable modem equipment. New York-based Bell Atlantic already offers its own high-speed Internet services, but has been slow to launch them throughout its region or market them aggressively to consumers. Its service is now available in Pittsburgh, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia and northern New Jersey, and will be available in New York City, Boston and Baltimore, among other markets, later this year, a spokeswoman said. America Online said it plans to offer the service as a single package and co-market it with Bell Atlantic. The entry by AOL, a consumer marketing powerhouse, promises to stimulate demand among customers hungry for faster Web access. Bell Atlantic would also be allowed to cross-promote other of its telecommunication products and services to AOL members. Dulles, Va.-based AOL said it will be announcing pricing when it kicks off service this summer, but the upgrade is expected to cost AOL members less than $20 extra per month, on top of the current $21.95 monthly full-service charge. Newman said he expected the AOL-Bell Atlantic service to be competitively priced compared to At Home's service, which starts at prices between $35 and $40, depending on locale. America Online stock fell as much as $22 Wednesday morning before battling back to $150.125, down $3.50 on the day in early afternoon composite New York Stock Exchange trading, where it was the most active issue. The drop took place amid a sharp decline in Internet issues and the broader stock market Wednesday, but followed a 66 percent rally in its share price over the past month. Bell Atlantic gained $1.12 cents to $54.87 in composite NYSE trading, amid a broad upswing in U.S. phone stocks.