Frank spoke more and more smoothly.
"Silicon Valley Online appearing in the Internet Explorer favorites of tens of millions of computers isn't a monopoly. It's the free choice of users and the market. In the context of the Department of Justice's antitrust investigation, this is the safest protective coloring. If Steve Case dares to keep using underhanded tricks to demote us at a time like this, he'll be making an enemy of the entire open Internet ecosystem. When that time comes, he'll be the one going to Washington for coffee."
"Go do it," Nakayama Takuya decided. "But I suggest it not pass through our hands. Don't make a big fanfare about this. Have other partners make the move instead."
A brief silence held at both ends of the phone line.
Nakayama Takuya lightly tapped his fingers on the desktop, sorting through his intelligence on North America's communications infrastructure.
"Steve Case's shift to a monthly subscription model can only solve the immediate user attrition," Nakayama Takuya said into the microphone, his speaking pace steady. "AOL still has one most fatal soft rib. They've built the foundation of their entire empire on dial-up networks."
Frank picked it up from the other end of the line. "The physical limits of dial-up are sitting right there. 56K modems are already the end point of analog signals over telephone lines. No matter how they optimize the protocol, the time users spend waiting for a high-resolution image to open won't get shorter."
"ADSL technology has already proven it's far superior to dial-up," Nakayama Takuya added, supplying information from the technical side. "The ANSI standard has already been completed. In Bell Atlantic's field trials in Virginia, they used a VoD prototype to run the test through successfully, proving that ordinary copper wire can absolutely carry data transmission