 Business Week wrote, "about $15 billion for TCI and its affiliates, by Armstrong's reckoning. And some ana- lysts think those numbers are low. They forecast that the costs could hit $20 billion or more."7 Armstrong couldn't remember saying any- thing remotely like that, nor could any of us who were with him in all his interviews. The briefing packages the company had prepared for the financial analysts included no estimates, although the company had tentatively planned to include $1.8 billion for the upgrade in its capital plans for the first three years following the acquisition, in addition to the $1.5 billion that TCI had yet to spend as part of its own upgrade plan. But because "some analysts" quoted an even higher number, we knew that our problem required more than a simple letter to the editor. So we charged AT&T Labs with developing the definitive story on how the upgrade would be accomplished and what it would cost. By June 30, the presentation was ready to go, and we organized a conference call with industry analysts. In five charts, it described how a traditional one-way cable TV system worked, how it could be up- graded to increase capacity and create two-way capabilities, how tradi- tional telephone service could be provided over the upgraded cable using off-the-shelf equipment, how a "packet data solution" could be integrated into that upgraded plant when it was available, and finally what all this would cost by category. The industry analysts remained wary, especially about the estimated time frame that AT&T Labs of- fered for the availability of packet data technology. Some of them had also heard horror stories about the earliest cable telephony experi- ments. The analysts who were familiar with the cable industry were skeptical that a cable plant could ever meet AT&T's service standards. The analysts who were familiar with the telephone industry ques- tioned whether AT&T could ever meld its cumbersome billing systems with TCI's. The stock slid another 37.5 cents, and Somers told us to repeat the 