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

To: Quest who wrote (6113)	3/4/1999 1:16:00 PM
From: RocketMan	Respond to of 41369

Quest, this has been discussed before, but let me give you my opinion FWIW. I think cable is the future, but emphasis on future, 2002 and beyond. The number of cable customers in 2002 is estimated to be around 15M, give or take a few million. That is less than AOL has today, around 17M. In 2002, who knows how many AOL might have. The problem is that even if everyone wanted to go to cable, there will not be enough cable infrastructure in place. Furthermore, until a robust infrastructure is in place, cable will bog down just as much if not more than dialup. So AOL is safe in growing dialup subs for another couple or three years, as far as their bottom line. In the meanwhile, AOL is rolling out a DSL deal with Bell Atlantic this summer. This will provide 100x faster access, according to them. I doubt if the average customer cares if their access is 100x faster or 500x faster, not until real time audio/video is added, which is still quite a ways off. While AOL is capturing the dial up and DSL audience, they will be making inroads into cable. I suspect they might strike a deal with Time Warner for their roadrunner service, but who knows. So if you are considering buying AOL, I can think of more things to worry about than cable right now. The overall market condition is more of a concern to me. However, if you are worried about cable competition, consider doing what I have done, split my investment between AOL and ATHM. I have about 3/4 into AOL and 1/4 into ATHM, but you can decide your own split.