Eric D. Madison <madison@acsi.net> wrote:

Well, that's not exactly true, UUNet nor PSI show "profits", they show substantial Revenue.

Well, that's not exactly true. Comm Week, Jan 20 1997, "Content Will Ultimately Win the Game for ISPs" By Wayne Rash": I mentioned PSINet and Uunet last week, explaining that both companies were dumping their retail consumers and concentrating on business customers. As a result of this change in strategy, both companies are announcing profits for the last quarter of 1996, which is nearly unheard of in the Internet industry.

Revenue will cause Wall Street to favor your stock even if you don't show real profits.

When money are going to upgrades you can always get profit by slowing down sales. Like, by increasing prices or by dumping less profitable customers. That causes loss of market share, unless competitors are doing the slow-down act as well. Which they do (except maybe MCI). It's kind of pocker game with no limit...

The only company in the Internet business that shows real profit is Cisco, and they are laughing all the way to the bank. Of course vendors always have higher profit margin than service companies.

Well, most of Cisco's profit is coming from small boxes. _The_ laughing company is Intel... --vadim