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Technology Stocks : America On-Line (AOL) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: RocketMan who wrote (5678)	2/24/1999 11:53:00 AM
From: Ed Forrest	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 41369

IMHO the most important innovation needed to grow the internet is speed.AOL is very aware of this and is expending all efforts to increase access speeds.I'm sure that be it DSL or Cable AOL is going to grab the best system and companies possible. Ed Forrest

To: RocketMan who wrote (5678)	2/24/1999 12:10:00 PM
From: RTev	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 41369

I suppose deals with individual cablecos would be possible if AOL had some kind of ready-made broadband solution to offer them. There are many little companies out there that aren't part of the @home partnership or affiliated with RoadRunner. But it's the investment question that's vital here. @home had to build a costly mirror backbone to guarantee the speed they'd need to offer broadband services. With Qwest and Level3 in the game, there's plenty of cable out there to repeat that, but is the benefit worth the cost? Part of what would worry me is that AOL's Online Service network is built on an 80's non-distributed model with servers in Virginia pumping out content to users. They have to pay for the data streaming both ways from Virginia to the user. They've started to rebuild the network on an internet model with regional proxy servers, but that seems to be only for the ISP part of their business. How much will it cost to upgrade the whole Online Service model to meet the demands of broadband? I don't know. I don't know how far along they are at modernizing their net, because I haven't seen any discussion of the issue at all. Most of the mentions seem to suggest that AOL merely needs the wire into the house, when it seems to me like they'd need far more costly fixes all along the way.