Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Technology Stocks : Spyglass -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Boplicity who wrote (984)	5/13/1999 12:21:00 PM
From: Bruce Cullen	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1412

Thursday, May 13, 1999 Big guns aim at digital media market May 12, 1999 11:12pm Reuters By Dick Satran SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - If it wasn't apparent before AT&T agreed to buy MediaOne last week in its second massive cable deal in a year and Microsoft reportedly began talks with Cable & Wireless Plc, it should be now: The giants are racing to create the communications networks of the future. They are emptying their wallets, going into their credit lines, making deals and investing hundreds of billions of dollars in new technology that will merge the Internet, cable television and telephone services over one big wire, with a wireless offshoot part of the mix as well. Analysts predict a frenzied pace of deal-making and building in the year ahead as other players get into position. Leading the charge, Microsoft Corp. and AT&T Corp. have been investing over a broad range of communications properties. Another key player, America Online Inc., has joined with telephone companies in recent months, and this week launched an Internet television venture with Hughes Electronics Corp. For consumers, not much has changed so far. The Internet is still mostly a worldwide waiting game -- with slow-to-display Web pages over telephone wires dominating and only a trickle of homes having high-speed service. But the promise of high-speed Internet service reaching a mass market via cable television wires is pushing a wave of deals forward, industry experts and analysts said. "The amount being paid in all of these deals can only be justified if a variety of different IP (Internet-based) services are being run over cable -- and they are probably going to arrive more quickly than anybody thought," said John Wilcox, director of broadband services for Cisco Systems Inc., the world's largest network equipment company. "There are a huge number of services that haven't even been dreamed up yet that will be produced by the new players in the market," he said. Cable is a high-speed pipeline to homes that can send almost any form of software or communications that be put in digital form. Enhanced television, telephone and high-speed Internet access are the basic services that will be offered, and are huge markets in their own right. But digital add-ons promise to expand the pool of offerings dramatically. One such add-on might be a private virtual network that lets a family link all of its services -- from cellular phones to pagers to television -- over a single telephone number. Video conferencing for the masses is also likely. But beyond mere communications services, AT&T and others could enter fields like entertainment, banking, retailing, indeed, anything in the huge swath of the economy that is software-driven, and is now widely dispersed on computers in different offices. The Internet can connect it all on the same desktop, on the same "virtual street," and if you own a piece of that prime real estate -- as AT&T and Microsoft will -- even a small percentage of the action is huge. Part of AT&T's bet is that by getting there first it will be the "content manager" for the multimedia word, said Terry Retter of PricewaterhouseCoopers' technology practice in Silicon Valley. The digital cable set-top boxes on televisions will deliver a big part of the $250 billion spent yearly on advertising. Add entertainment, computer software, information and financial services, which also can be sent over the transom, and you have markets worth hundreds of billions more. But can consumers be enticed to buy the services? Low cost and convenience might make them attractive. Retter says AT&T, or other players that move into the multimedia arena, will provide automation to tie together the paperwork and accounting that goes into millions of electronic transactions daily. Consumers might save money if a single company handles the task. For example, in telephone billing, up to 40 percent of the cost is in billing customers