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To: Voltaire who wrote (90914)	1/22/1999 8:39:00 PM
From: Dalin	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 176387

Hi Voltaire! OT OT OT Hey this whole clinton thing is put into perspective nicely here! Message 7430816 Have a good weekend! D.

To: Voltaire who wrote (90914)	1/22/1999 9:52:00 PM
From: Mohan Marette	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 176387

<--Ot--> Say Volatire here is something that confirms your earlier conjecture about ATHM/XCIT/AOL/(and now put AT&T to the pot also). Quite exciting if you ask me,I think I will ask mom to wire me some money soon.<g> At Home Deal Would Create Stronger AOL Rival NEW YORK (Reuters) - A possible move by AT&T Corp. (NYSE:T - news) to sell its Internet access business to At Home Corp. (Nasdaq:ATHM - news) would give the telecommunications giant a $1 billion stake in the high-flying Internet company, and give At Home greater muscle to compete against America Online Inc. (NYSE:AOL - news), analysts said. AT&T is considering selling its Internet access business, including its 1.3 million WorldNet subscribers and nearly 1 million business customers, to At Home, the Wall Street Journal reported. In exchange, AT&T would get about $1 billion in At Home stock. AT&T will have even greater control of At Home after it completes its pending $48 billion acquisition of At Home's largest shareholder, cable television giant Tele-Communications Inc. (Nasdaq:LBTYA - news) AT&T and At Home declined to comment. Some industry analysts said the deal was unnecessary, since AT&T will already have a substantial stake in At Home. Others said the potential move made sense, primarily from a financial standpoint. AT&T's fledging Internet business currently gets lost among the company's much stronger long distance and wireless businesses. The unit does not get valued as richly as the lofty prices attached to many Internet companies' stocks, analysts said. By shifting its customers to At Home, those subscribers would immediately be valued at a much higher level than under the long distance company's stock. AT&T would no longer have direct financial control of these subscribers, but it would see even greater gains through its At Home stock holdings, analysts said. AT&T has lagged in the Internet business. The company has been more aggressive over the past year, forging marketing alliances with Internet search companies, including At Home's merger partner Excite Inc. (Nasdaq:XCIT - news), and buying International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE:IBM - news)'s global network. The possible move to sell the Internet access business would allow AT&T to exit the dial-up consumer business and focus on more lucrative areas of the data business, analysts said. ''AT&T is not making a heck of a lot money on dial-up accounts. Margins are razor thing....AT&T is doing this, trying to make the best out of an increasingly bad deal in being in (the) low-price dial-up (business),'' said Dan Briere, president of telecommunications industry consulting firm TeleChoice Inc. At Home, meanwhile, would benefit from the extra boost of AT&T's customers. Those customers, on top of its planned acquisition of Internet search and directory provider Excite, would help At Home move from a second-tier Internet access company to a stronger contender in the Internet service provider market, analysts said. ''AT&T doesn't have scale in the consumer Internet business, nor does At Home. Put them together with Excite and you have the makings of something far more powerful than the piece parts,'' Tod Jacobs, a telecommunications analyst with Sanford Bernstein, said in a research report. ''On its own, the At Home-Excite deal didn't make a lot of sense. But now the deal, in an AT&T/WorldNet environment, makes a lot of sense. At Home could become a more attractive, viable competitor to AOL, but would still be just a very small percentage of AOL,'' said Gary Arlen, president of Arlen communications, a Bethesda, Md.-based research company. AOL has 15 million subscribers, while At Home has 330,000. Even with AT&T's customers, ''quite truthfully, it will take an awfully long time to catch up to AOL,'' Arlen said.