Rodent Regatta

Most customers who move from dial-up access to cable modem or DSL modem access are elated – once the service is working. The only people who are happier are those who travel and have to use dial-up on the road after having fast access at the office and/or at home.

How fast is fast? Most DSL and cable connections for residences and small businesses are specified at around 1.5Mbps (that’s million bits per second). That’s roughly 25 times the speed of really good dial-up service.

Now comes a big announcement from Verizon, SBC and BellSouth.

They’re talking about running fiber to the home and providing 100Mbps service. That’s over 65 times faster than your DSL or cable connection. With speed like that, you can get a whole host of services that require too much bandwidth to be effective at 1.5Mbps.

In close proximity to this announcement has been a significant move in the stock price of RCN. The current annual report can be found here. The stock closed at $0.81 per share on May 1, 2003. Today it closed at $2.19.

For those keeping score at home, that means $10,000 invested on May 1 would be worth $27,037 today. [Full disclosure: I’ve owned RCN for quite some time and I still do.]

The bandwidth business is going to boom. I have no idea when. I have no clue as to what any of the specific companies might do or when. However, there are opportunities out there. Use your ”mad money” and place a few bets. You might get a pleasant surprise in ten or twenty years!