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

To: Sam who wrote (14885)	5/5/1999 12:54:00 PM
From: nohalo	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 41369

AOL has something up its sleeve. Most likely Steve Case has lined up a deal with AT&T, in exchange for dropping any interest in Media One. A Broadband deal with T is in the cards. This combined with TA indicates a buying opportunity for AOL. Load up, and relax. DA

To: Sam who wrote (14885)	5/5/1999 1:11:00 PM
From: robert duke	Respond to of 41369

Well it does need to get the share price up for sure.

To: Sam who wrote (14885)	5/5/1999 1:16:00 PM
From: Tunica Albuginea	Respond to of 41369

Sam, excellent point. I was trying to convince my sister Sunday to get ATHM like me ( she has COMCAST TV cable ). She said what do I need it for? I said, well you are shopping on eBay this will enable you to download pages faster. She said how much is it? I said only $20/Month more than you are paying now. She said, you got to be kidding.Why do I need to move any faster? What I have is pretty good. I do my email some paperwork and AOL is good enough for me. Again, I agree with you that when baby boomers reach a certain age the speed of flow of events tends to slow. People want to slow down and enjoy and savor things rather than rush though helter skelter. I have 2 cable modems at home because my 18 year old had to have cable to play games with his Falcon NW PC : falcon-nw.com gaming system #5 ( his PC actually has a 25GB hard drive because games require a lot of memory to play fast; he is a speed freak ). Incidentally we got big holes in wall and wall paper to get cable up on 2nd floor. Rip the carpet etc. My sister said: " Are you kidding? I don't need all that. My 333 PII is good enough. All I need is a better monitor ". So I agree with you that broadband is overplayed and will underdeliver and maybe that is why USWest sold UMG 3 years ago. And of course in Europe and Asia there isn't any whole lot of cable to speak off. TA you said : Lets face it AOL is losing market share. You're joking right? If anyone believes the sky is falling simply because T sealed the bid your dreaming. They need to execute, they need to fire people, they need to come up with a strategy that works. Last count, T and ATHM combined subscriber base doesn't even come close to AOL. We're not talking a couple hundred - we're talking millions. What amazes me is that everyone thinks broadband is going to be adopted so eagerly. Folks, it's going to take a lot of time and effort. More importantly, it's going to take a monumental marketing effort to get the average american household to belly up and pay for broadband. We see the world through rose colored glasses, salivating that we get higher KB/sec downloads and brag that we downloaded the latest Star Wars trailer in under 5 minuets. Meanwhile, the mass market consumer simply logs in, reads some e-mail and surfers the Web for awhile. It's AOL bread and butter - and their execution has been flawless in capturing the market. All signs point to further gains. S.

To: Sam who wrote (14885)	5/5/1999 2:20:00 PM
From: Lee Martin	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 41369

Sam, I agree with you 100%. A couple of points that I haven't seen made yet: Let's assume I do what T wants me to do and get my telephone, television,and internet service all through their cable line. 1. What happens when the guy with the backhoe 10 miles down the road cuts the cable line? Cable has no redundant lines to reroute my service like the phone co's. Now, not only do I not have my TV, but no phone or internet! I guess I can be thankful T hasn't yet bought all the electric co's, so I still have lights and can read a book until I fall asleep from boredom. I can use my cell phone to call the cable co. and tell them the cable's out for the ___th time this month. 2. What's to keep T from jacking up the rates once they get me to switch all my services? It would be like putting the cable co's on steroids. I think it is going to be very difficult for T to convince consumers to put all their eggs into T's basket, especially when they know they are still dealing with the same unresponsive, monopolistic local cable co. that is now part of T. Regards,Lee