Chapter 121: Infrastructure Investment
Chapter 121: Infrastructure Investment
And the overwhelming market dominator of the current era was AOL. After all, it accounted for 40 percent of America’s internet supply.
The problem was that AOL was currently in fierce competition with Parallel Soft in the portal site business, and Parallel Soft had already completely crushed them despite AOL originally holding the number one market share.
“But AOL barely invests in infrastructure anyway, so even if we weren’t competitors, there’s not much chance they’d sign an infrastructure investment contract with us.”
Seongcheol had already investigated information on multiple ISP companies.
Since they were planning to invest a considerable amount of money, it was only natural. Moreover, this investment was not simply aimed at securing infrastructure. The internet was spreading rapidly, which meant ISPs would also grow rapidly and generate enormous profits, so they were targeting that as well.
This investment was not a service contract where they simply paid money to install something. In the end, the infrastructure would become the ISP’s asset, so it was only natural that they would receive a share of the profits in exchange for providing that capital.
Seongcheol and Hyein planned to purchase a large amount of stock with ten million dollars while requiring infrastructure investment as a contractual condition.
“Which companies are actively investing in infrastructure?”
“For now, Bell Atlantic, AT&T, and Comcast, I guess? Among them, Bell Atlantic is investing the most aggressively.”
(Translator’s Notes: Comcast — Major American telecommunications and media company founded in 1963, best known as one of the largest cable television and internet service providers in the United States.)
They were unfamiliar names. But even if they had the same names as in his previous life, there was no way Insu would remember American internet service providers from back then, so it did not really matter.
Insu received the documents from his father and slowly looked through them.
Bell Atlantic held roughly 10 percent market share, while the other companies had less than 5 percent each. Looking at it like this, they might seem like collapsing or extremely small companies, but this was America.
Moreover, this was still the period when internet adoption had only just begun accelerating, so all of them were companies expanding aggressively.
In particular, Bell Atlantic, which Seongcheol had mentioned, was currently laying DSL and fiber optic cables. DSL referred to a concept that included ADSL, which Koreans were familiar with. It was a technology that provided high-speed internet through existing telephone lines.
(Translator’s Notes: DSL — Digital Subscriber Line, an internet access technology that transmits digital data over telephone lines and was an important broadband technology before fiber internet became widespread.)
Oh...
Both DSL and fiber optic cable were familiar terms to Insu, who had been Korean in 2025, so they immediately drew his attention. But that did not mean he immediately chose that company.
“What company do you think is best, Mom and Dad?”
At that, Seongcheol exchanged a glance with Hyein before speaking.
“We think Comcast is the best choice.”
Bell Atlantic was indeed making the most aggressive investments and introducing the latest technologies, but it did not seem like particularly wise investing.
“They keep talking about cutting-edge premium services, but the efficiency compared to the investment is far too low.”
They had not started actual service yet, but the fiber optic network they were planning would cost an enormous amount of money. Moreover, aside from internet service, they were simultaneously testing CDMA for wireless communications as well.
(Translator’s Notes: CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) — A digital wireless communication standard widely used in the late 1990s and 2000s for mobile telecommunications.)
It was questionable whether they could really install all of that across the entirety of America.
“In comparison, Comcast uses existing cable networks, so the costs aren’t nearly as high, while still making stable internet speeds far faster than current connections possible. I think it’s the most realistic strategy. And they’re not relying solely on cable networks either. They’re also working hard on dedicated lines.”
Unlike Korea, cable TV penetration in America was extremely high. As of 1996, it had already reached 70 percent.
And while not yet in LA, internet through cable networks was already being introduced in some regions of America. The speed was around 1.5 Mbps, or roughly 150 KB per second, which was considered extremely fast by current standards. It was dozens of times faster than ordinary modems.
That was more than enough to service an MMORPG without problems. Even online games from 2025 could still be played perfectly fine on 1.5 Mbps, even if downloading patches might be difficult.
“And Comcast’s roots are in cable TV, so there’s no chance they’ll clash with us on the content side.”
“Ah. That’s true.”
After hearing Seongcheol’s explanation, Insu looked through the documents again, and it really did seem like Comcast only cared about infrastructure investment rather than content. Everything content-related involved TV home shopping or cable TV channel expansion.
There was no way to know which of these ISPs would survive and become giants in the future. But unlike ordinary stock investments aimed purely at profit, they could afford to be more aggressive here.
Parallel Soft’s investment would be going into the infrastructure that would become the foundation of the ISP’s growth, meaning its chances of growing more rapidly than competitors would naturally increase.
Of course, that did not guarantee success, but it certainly improved the odds somewhat.
After discussing things for quite a while, Insu’s family ultimately decided to invest a total of ten million dollars.
“Welcome.”
A refined-looking white man who appeared to be in his mid-forties greeted Seongcheol.
“Mr. Richard?”
“Yes. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
It was Richard Halperin, vice president of Comcast. Comcast was a fairly large company with a market capitalization of roughly 3.2 billion dollars.
Parallel Soft had also received a high valuation thanks to WET and was valued at around 1.3 billion dollars, but since it was still a private company, it could not compare to Comcast. Yet despite that, the vice president himself had immediately come out in response to the investment proposal. There was likely another reason behind that.
“I’ve heard a lot about Parallel Soft. Especially your recently launched TLF Online, which I hear has become extremely popular.”
“Ah. Thank you.”
That was probably not just polite conversation. MMORPGs required massive amounts of traffic, so for Comcast, which operated an ISP business and was preparing higher-quality services, it was impossible not to pay attention.
The two chatted casually for a while to ease the atmosphere before moving to the main topic.
“You want to invest in our infrastructure sector?”
“Yes. As we already mentioned in the proposal, we need infrastructure such as dedicated line installations and edge servers in major cities.”
Of course, infrastructure was the foundation, but the detailed proposal also included cooperation for WET and TLF Online’s smooth operation, such as high-speed backbone network access, QoS traffic prioritization, and content delivery networks.
(Translator’s Notes: QoS (Quality of Service) — A network management system that prioritizes certain traffic or services to maintain stable performance and reduce lag or congestion.)
Richard briefly showed a troubled expression.
If the company had enough funding, there would be no reason to accept this kind of investment. Of course, since the infrastructure had to be installed eventually anyway, it was beneficial to do it using someone else’s money, but it was not free. They would have to hand over stock in return.
Moreover, they would need to provide prioritized service for the sake of cooperation, which meant the quality of service for other users could decrease, making it somewhat risky.
But we’re short on funds at the perfect timing.
Ten million dollars was not a small amount of money, but considering Comcast’s scale, it was not enough to justify accepting all these conditions outright. However, timing was the issue.
Just last year, they had spent 2.1 billion dollars acquiring the TV home shopping company QVC, leaving them with little remaining capital.
(Translator’s Notes: QVC — American television home shopping company founded in 1986, famous for large-scale TV-based retail broadcasting.)
Moreover, as the internet market exploded recently, competition between ISPs intensified, increasing the burden of infrastructure investment.
Customers were already lined up waiting. If they expanded quickly, it would immediately translate into profits. But if they delayed, customers would move to competitors, causing them to lose the market share battle.
Naturally, they had already borrowed every dollar they could and sold stocks to gather investment capital, but they still felt it was insufficient. In particular, competitor Bell Atlantic was aggressively promoting even higher-performance services than theirs, creating immense pressure.
And then this investment proposal had arrived.
Of course, Hyein and Seongcheol had already researched all of this before coming.
“Very well.”
Richard briefly considered trying to demand a premium, but this money had come specifically under the condition of infrastructure investment, and the percentage compared to the company’s market capitalization was too small. Moreover, judging from the other side’s attitude, they seemed to understand the situation fairly well, so he simply gave up.
“We’ll give you 0.35 percent. A total of five hundred thousand shares.”
Seongcheol also did not try to push for more aggressively. They were already receiving slightly more favorable terms than the stock price justified, and Comcast was a company with a decent evaluation, so if they simply wanted to sell stock, there were plenty of buyers.
Of course, they had chosen Comcast because Parallel Soft’s side, which was requesting cooperation, carried less risk. But if the demands became excessive, Comcast could always reconsider.
Even as Seongcheol shook hands with Richard and left, he could not be completely certain. It was a rational decision based on calculations, but no one could know the future.
However, from an investment perspective, it could definitely be called a success.
Comcast would continue growing afterward and become a company worth 120 billion dollars by 2025, meaning the stock price would rise roughly thirty-seven times. Moreover, as expected, it would become a company with fairly good dividends, providing stable income.
The moment Eric got off work, he logged into TLF Online.
About a month had passed since official launch, but rather than getting tired of it, he had become completely addicted.
“Wow, there are so many people.”
When he logged back into the city where he had logged off yesterday, the game went through a longer loading time than usual and stuttered as other players gradually appeared on screen. Soon, the crowded cityscape filled the display.
He had thought there were already plenty of people on the first day, but now it felt almost suffocating. In major cities where players gathered like this, it was packed with people to the point it felt like Disneyland.
If Eric had been Korean, especially someone from Seoul, he would probably have been reminded of the subway during rush hour.
In reality, TLF Online’s subscriber count had exploded during that time.
Unlike in Insu’s previous life, the buildup through the TLF series had been executed properly. Parallel Soft had personally launched WET, operated community bulletin boards, worked hard on educating people about MMORPGs and promoting them, and finally maintained fairly good service quality through aggressive server expansion.
And recently, there had been another factor increasing both gamer login times and subscriber counts: ISPs had started offering free dial-up access numbers.
As the name implied, these were numbers that incurred no call charges, exempting users from hourly telephone fees, which were the greatest burden on internet users of the current era.
Of course, users still had to pay monthly subscription fees instead.
This pricing model emerged because competition over ISP market share had intensified recently. Some companies sacrificed profits to raise their market share, and other companies followed suit to avoid losing customers.
It could be called one of the positive functions of free-market competition.
But that did not mean the golden age of the internet had arrived because of it. The companies had launched such services, but they had not actually built the infrastructure necessary to support them properly.
As a result, the free dial-up numbers had limited user capacity and restricted connection times. Even then, disconnections were common.
Furthermore, the service coverage itself was limited. Rather than implementing it nationwide, companies used it like short-term promotions in certain regions to attract customers quickly.
Because of that, the actual increase in internet users was not all that massive.
Still, the fact that players no longer had to suffer under hourly fee pressure was extremely attractive to TLF Online players. Eric had signed up for it as well and was now enjoying TLF Online for more than four hours a day.
On weekends, he would even stay awake all night playing during late-night hours when fewer people were using the free access numbers.
Thanks to that, now on his fourth playthrough, he had moved beyond merely struggling to survive and reached the point where he could leisurely search for and enjoy content.