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Technology Stocks : AT&T -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mark Oliver who wrote (2522)	6/5/1999 3:55:00 AM
From: FR1	Respond to of 4298

Here is another angle: A group of silicon investors decided they wanted to put the internet on cable. After hiring a NASA consultant, they became convinced that only by building a separate backbone could you do the job. They sold the idea to numerous cable businesses and ATHM was born. Hence the idea of "equal access" must address this requirement. Just dumping all the thousands of ISPs on the cable would not work. T has kind of already addressed this question. AOL is welcome on the cable. Here are two ways they can go for "equal access": 1) Come to T the same way ATHM has and with the same arrangement (ie build your own backbone and we will share profits the same way we do with ATHM). 2) YOu can take a ride on the ATHM network. Each customer, however, has to pay ATHM the $40/mo charge plus whatever AOL wants. AOL does not want either of these. AOL believes in the following: 1) Get politicans to regulate prices and force T to sell bandwidth at give away prices (the price a bunch of politicans decide is right). You do this by first getting a "equal access" ruling and then going back and complaining to the court that T is unfairly charging too much, thus ignoring the "equal access" court ruling. 2) Once that is done, blanket the earth with sign on CDs. Once a user signs on, try to keep their eyeballs forever. When they hit a url, they brouse the internet through the AOL brouser. This will allow AOL to become a almost monopoly ISP.