rol would be no easier than it had been. The call ended as all these calls do-with perfunctory declarations that all parties saw only great opportunities to work even more closely together, looked forward to ever deeper strategic relationships, and wished each other well. It didn't take long for Armstrong to realize that his leverage over Time Warner had changed. AT&T had billions of dollars trapped in Time Warner Entertainment. The company was receiving absolutely nothing in return, and turning its share of the partnership into cash to pay down debt was an essential element of the MediaOne acquisi- tion. At a minimum, AT&T had hoped to restructure AT&T's passive stake in Time Warner Entertainment by trading its programming assets for a greater say in the management of its cable systems. But while Time Warner considered the structure of Time Warner Enter- tainment untidy, it had no motivation to change it. AOL's passion for ubiquity, however, was something that AT&T might exploit. AOL wanted to be everywhere, especially on high- bandwidth systems that could support streaming audio and video. The AtHome Corporation had exclusive rights to provide online service over cable systems passing 65 percent of American homes. AOL had already spent millions in hard cash and political capital to gain access to those systems. Now that it was merging with Time Warner, Arm- strong could see the offer just around the bend: "I'll carry you, if you carry me." Armstrong, who knew that a network's value increased with its usage, believed that it was in AtHome's best interests to carry any content that would attract users. While AtHome's exclusivity agreements with the cable companies had been important in its start- up period, once the service was established, it could make a lot of money providing broadband access to companies like AOL. Tough Calls But Armstrong was in a bind. While AT&T had theoretical control of AtHome, the other cable partners had an effective veto over any major decisions. They couldn't even agree on a strategy