We are initiating coverage on The Southern Company (SO) with a Neutral recommendation and a target price of $35.  Headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, Southern Company is one of the largest generators of electricity in the nation, serving both regulated and competitive markets across the southeastern U.S. It is a holding company for four regulated Southern electric utilities that serve about 4.4 million customers – Georgia Power, Alabama Power, Gulf Power, and Mississippi Power. The company participates in all phases of the electric utility business with more than 42,000 megawatts (MW) of electric generating capacity, and an extensive grid of transmission and distribution lines. The company also engages in the construction, acquisition, and management of generation assets, provision of digital wireless communications services, and the provision of fiber optic solutions to telecommunication providers.  The Southern Company is the premier energy company serving the Southeast U.S. It remains ...

Omnicity Corp wants to be rural America’s premier telecommunications and broadband Internet Service Provider. The company has developed a business model that has proven successful in thousands of rural Indiana homes, providing high-speed Internet service on a mass basis at a lower cost and more efficiently than wire or fiber optic solutions. With this model in hand, Omnicity is now growing rapidly through acquisitions with the goal of capturing the underserved and unserved rural and small town markets throughout America.

The majority of rural homes do not yet have access to broadband service. Cable is often unavailable, and DSL service is usually limited to urban/suburban areas. Traditional dialup service is simply no longer a viable solution, due to the growing audio/video content of the Web. Omnicity estimates that there are currently over 40 million homes, businesses, and other users in the

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