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Technology Stocks : AUTOHOME, Inc -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Boplicity who wrote (9209)	5/7/1999 4:16:00 AM
From: Ted Schnur	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 29970

Gregory and all If AOL promotes itself as a premium channel (like HBO), they would have to justify the additional cost of their service. AOL may already know that in the long run, they will not be able to sell the public on the additional $9.95. The problem is not competing with ATHM/XCIT for content, but competing with all the content (now) available from the Internet that AOL does control. Sharing a channel with other ISP's would also be a problem for consumers who may perceive a decreased level of service due to the bandwidth hogging applications being used others on the same cable segment. This problem can be solved my giving AOL customers their own channel, but can the current standard for cable modems support that? Even if the answer is yes, what about other ISP's? If you give each ISP their own channel, you will run out of channels for TV broadcast, let alone DTV, HDTV, and the future digital must carry rules. I have spent some (painful) time reading posts on the AOL thread. There are a lot of people who feel that opening up cable to other ISP's is the fair and proper thing to do. The problem is that no one on the AOL thread and few on this thread seems to have given much thought to how the cable network can be opened. How would you allocate usage, billing, upgrade and design costs across multiple ISP's? Would you also require wireless and satellite based ISP's to be open? IMHO, the complexity of the problem is going to make those congressional talking heads spin until they puke. I think Steve Case has made a huge mistake in trying to get congress to solve his business problems for him. AOL's business and political strategy will be under intense public scrutiny (as will AT&T's), and that is a big risk when most of the AOL's net worth is directly related to the public perception of it's future. So what do we have? AOL is trying to use congress (and specific congressmen) to slowdown or blackmail AT&T, a company in the midst of one of the most remarkable turnarounds in history, (assuming they will succeed) while creating something that has never existed! AT&T may have to give up something so the political powers can save some face. I doubt that open access is going to happen unless someone comes up with a system that does not delay the rollout of broadband services (like HDTV has been delayed), does not increase the cost to the consumer, and does not involve direct and long term government involvement. Open Access?... There may be a way, but I can't find it. Ted