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Technology Stocks : Covad Communications - COVD -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bill McCullen who wrote (68)	4/14/1999 1:47:00 PM
From: lml	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10485

In the near future, both Covad and Northpoint are supposed to move in to the area (though I am not sure if they will serve residences right away) and Bell Atlantic is promising to roll out DSL too. What do you suspect will happen to prices once this happens? Bill: I don't think the situation in Arlington, MA will be any different than it is here in LA. BEL is offering the same DSL pricing structure as SBC/PacBell. The CLECs will offer a pricing structure that fits their model & will market customer service & network efficiency to substantiate any higher pricing. Puffery will be unavoidable. As far as the presence of cable access, I think the story will not be much different. Here in LA, the "lesser" income areas are presently served by MediaOne (Comcast); the "higher" income areas are NOT presently served by Century Comm (Adelphia), though first rollout is anticipated in the beach cities (Santa Monica, Redondo, Manhattan Beach) by this summer. LA's poshier Westside is lower down the list & will not see rollouts until year-end at the earliest -- IMHO. Cable, IMHO, caters to a different market -- more of the couch potato type who desires all the bells & whistles broadband has to offer in conjunction with digital TV, & is lesser concerned (for the time being) with guaranteed performance & security. Neverthess, current ILEC DSL pricing has been established to compete with cable pricing. At present, I think DSL has much more to offer than cable. Over the longer term, if the telcos are slow to deploy more fiber deeper into the plant, cable may offer better performance. Its a toss-up right now from my corner of the world now. JMO.