@Home has left the building...

Well, my cable modem connection got its plug pulled last night. I woke up this morning to no connection at all. Called the support line and there's a very nice recorded message from AT&T telling me that they are very sorry for the outage and will do their best to have be back online sometime in the next 6 days...grrrr...do you have any idea how hard it is going back to dialup after cable?

I am lucky so far my Connection from COX @HOME is still online.

I hope it stays up because Dialup sucks!

Scott

I know how ya feel. Whem Im at school Im on a nice fast T1 line, then I come home and have to deal with 56K. :( If my town ever gets a CO Ill be the first one in line for DSL.

Steve

SIX DAYS! Sounds like good old AT&T. You know the shutdown was NO SURPRISE. AT&T should of had the back up plan in place and operational at the moment of shut down.

AT&T should go out of business completely.... they deserve it..

I think its funny how so many posts I have seen over the past fews days express the sentiment that the cable companies KNEW this was going to happen, and should have had a backup plan, READY TO GO AT A MOMENTS NOTICE. I think ATT's plan was to buy the company that they already own a substantial chunk of. Cox and Comcast had been upfront about the fact that their intentions were to not renew their contracts with @Home, and were in the process of building their own systems. I guess they should have tried to somehow keep it a secret that they were doing so until the systems were in place. As it is, we are talking about lapses in service of a few days to a couple of weeks. I am lucky that my service is still working, and I hope to get through this without every losing my connection, but had these companies not already been making preparations we would have been looking at much longer outages. Who knew that @Home's bondholders would be so blind so as to shoot themselves in the foot, reducing the value of a company already rapidly losing value?

Here is the news story from www.SkyReport.com (http://www.SkyReport.com) (used with permission)

--------------------------------------------

The weekend shutdown of cable Internet service Excite@Home took its toll on millions of customers nationwide (including the offices of SkyTRENDS).

Press reports suggested that close to 4 million consumers may be impacted by the shutdown, which occurred after a federal bankruptcy court approved the move late Friday. The company reportedly wants cable partners to pay higher fees. By forcing the higher rates, @Home and its bondholders hope they could prove the network is worth more than the $307 million AT&T has bid for it.

AT&T Broadband said it negotiated with @Home late into Friday evening and early Saturday morning only to see service cut off. The company said it would issue credits to any customers who experience service interruptions. Other cable companies that could be impacted include Comcast and Cox.

With the demise of @Home, satellite broadband products from StarBand and DirecWay surfaced as alternatives to the missing wired Internet service.

During the weekend, DirecTV Broadband, a unit of the DBS company, said it's offering two free months of DirecTV DSL service at no charge to cable users nationwide in immediate need of a broadband alternative to @Home. Consumers who take advantage of the offer are required to commit up to one year of DSL service. In addition, DirecTV Broadband will waive its $49.99 activation fee with the offer. The deal represents a $150 value.

Bogy, AT&T screwed up. INSURANCE is what thet needed, in case the deal fell thru.

Then again with the pending sale of AT&T broadband to AOL including cable and internet I guess management really doesnt care............

AT&T is running commercials for this now unavailable service. I returned a cable box for my friends who had the fire, there was a VERY unhappy at home customer there and they told him there was no one to speak to him.......

Bob, just what kind of insurance should ATT have had in place for this event? Any time you have insurance you have to count the cost, and decide if the risk is greater than the cost. I have car insurance, partly because the law requires it, partly because I the possible liablity would be to great to bear. I also have homeowners insurance, and just increased it because my neighbors also had a fire, and it scared us. I have health insurance because I have seen all to well the disasterous results of not carrying this protection. But when I buy a radio at Best Buy I don't buy "buyer's protection" (insurance) for it. The risk is to small, the cost is to high, and I figure the likelyhood of needing the protection is not greater than the cost. ATT, and many others in the industry, believed that their offer would be accepted. They evidenty did not believe that the cost of developing a complete redundant system was worth the cost. Hindsight is great, obviously now we can all say, "that was what they should have done." But if they had said, "We are going to raise everyone's internet fee $10 a month for a system we don't plan to use, but only hold in reserve, 'Just in case,'" your response Bob, would have been, "See the evil cable company is ripping us off again, for a system they don't even need." BTW, my cable company has made sure that I have had NO disruption, and won't have any. I really like my cable company. They care about me.

Bogy, you prove my point, since YOUR cable company did somehow make alternative arrangements. The COST to AT&T goes well beyond some ticked off customers. After speaking briefly with the unhappy guy at the cable company yesterday he is FED UP with AT&T. He will likely pull the plug on their cable modem service as well as cable TV, and find a new cellular and long distance provider. His BUSINESS depends on a service which isnt working..... Worse his provider KNEW this could happen...

Just as I avoid ANYTHING with the AT&T logo. Because they ripped me off!

So you see the cost to AT&T goes well beyond just its ISP service. When you bundle services and brand everything with your name a bad decision can have wide reprocussions.

If AOL buys the broad band service I will be happy to become a sub of the ISP part.

My @HOME has not gone off! COX made a deal with @HOME yesterday that will keep me online! I can't believe that COX is paying @HOME $96 a month to keep me online when I pay them only $35.00 a month for the service!

Thanks COX!

Scott

Well, today is day 5 of no service for me. AT&T sent out a letter a couple of weeks ago that said that they were in the process of building their own network...maybe if they had put more effort into getting that up and running rather than putting their effort into a failed bid to purchase @Home, I might have service now. Local news has been reporting that we in Denver should be up and running on the new AT&T ATTBI network tomorrow...not holding my breath.

_____________________________________
Scott Greczkowski:
"I can't believe that COX is paying @HOME $96 a month to keep me online when I pay them only $35.00 a month for the service!

Thanks COX!"
_____________________________________
Uh, Scott? Who do you think is going to pay for that? It won't be COX. Prepare to assume 'the position'.


Bob, you are truly clueless about this situation. It looks like another rant against another service you don't have. Why don't you leave it to the people that pay for this service and are affected by it?

My service was down for only 4 days. It was back up a full day ahead of the schedule AT&T announced on Monday. Everyone should be moved over to the network by Friday. That's less than a week! That's incredible for an undertaking of this size, and indicates AT&T was making preparations before Excite@HOME got stoooopid and pulled the plug.

The fact that Excite@HOME settled for less than AT&T was offering, to pick up the service and keep the business running, shows that AT&T's offer was not too low (Yeah, the media says AT&T only offered $307 million, but they were also assuming over $83 million in debt). The bondholders that felt the business was worth $1 billion were smoking something (maybe their bond notes). Just because Excite@HOME had pissed away 100's of millions of dollars on their "portal", doesn't mean there is added value. Nobody wants the portal. It was a money pit, not an investment. After another 3 months of operations, the extortion money the other cable companies paid out will be gone, and the investors will get only the pennies from asset liquidation. AT&T's offer would have let them walk away with 39 cents on the dollar. They will be lucky to get 4 cents on the dollar.

As of Friday morning, AT&T had an agreement with Excite@HOME to purchase the assets. That was their strategy to avoid service interruptions and the only reason they wanted to buy Excite@HOME. Friday afternoon, the judge threw out the cable companies agreements that didn't expire until June 2002. Cox, Comcast, Charter, and AT&T were already planning to have their own networks by that time. The wheels were in motion for the extinction of Excite@HOME. AT&T warned Excite@HOME that they had their own network. Excite@HOME had called what they thought was AT&T's bluff. Excite@HOME attempted to force AT&T to up their bid by disconnecting their customers. The only reason AT&T wanted to buy Excite@HOME was to avoid service interruptions and now Excite@HOME had removed AT&T's only incentive. Excite@HOME thought they had leverage, but actually AT&T was holding all of the cards. Did you know Excite@HOME actually runs over an AT&T owned Internet backbone? How could Excite@HOME be so stupid as to not figure out AT&T knew how to build a network? Most of the infrastructure is owned by the cable companies. Why should AT&T pay $1 billion or $700 million when it will only cost them, at most, $200 million to build their own?

AT&T could not have moved customers before the contracts were vacated Friday at midnight. AT&T would have been in violation of the contract agreements. Not a good place to be in a lawsuit.

AT&T and Charter had the advantage of having their own infrastructure nearly completed and made the wisest decisions to not pay the extortion money. Cox and Comcast are going to have to pay for the 3 months of operating expenses (extortion money) to maintain service ($160 million each) plus build-out their own networks ($100 to 150 million each). By paying Excite@HOME these extortion funds, they are more than doubling their costs to provide their own infrastructure.

Excite@HOME was incredibly short-sighted in not understanding how insignificant they had become. By forcing the issue and causing AT&T and Charter to leave, they lost the only asset they really had...the customers. Without the customer base, Excite@HOME is nothing, and that makes them worthless. It was Excite@HOME that lost sight that the customers were their most important asset and used them as pawns in a game to get more money. The bondholders essentially threw the baby out with the bathwater.

AT&T and Charter were the smart parties in this situation. In addition to no longer being beholden to another interest in monetary negotiations, they will get to keep an extra $20 per customer. Their networks should pay for themselves in about a year.

Now Excite@HOME has no other option but to shutter operations. The only thing Excite@HOME succeeded at was defining an entirely new level of stupidity.

Sure some people get emotional about it. They get upset that at this incredible time of turmoil not every call gets answered. I, for one, understand the incredible obstacles that have to be overcome to pull this off. Yeah, it was inconvenient. Was it a travesty? Not exactly.

Excite@HOME has announced they will be ceasing operations at the end of February. Why are you not upset that their website is still up? Why stop commercials when the service will be back up before a new customer gets an install appointment? That would be counter productive.

I hope AOL never gets ahold of AT&T Broadband.

I remember the OLD days where service comes first. Now how many customers will the AT&T brand loose over this? THATS THE TRUE COST! There are lots of businesses being hurt by this situation. AT&T should of bit the bullet and paid the price for a month of service with excite, and made a smooth transistion. Or had the network ready before friday. No matter.... AT&T is selling off its broadband unit. Just another example of their overpaying for companies, investing millions, then ruining it and selling the remnants off for peanuts.

Well, I'm back up and running under ATTBI as of last night...so 5 days down. Not as bad as it could have been. I'm kind of annoyed that ATTBI is limiting download speed to 1.5 mbps, as @home didn't have that limitation, but it's still a hell of a lot better than the 56k I had to go back to this week.

Cox evidently felt that paying the extortion was worth it to avoid customer disruption. They are not only promising prices will not increase, they are talking about lower rates in some instances. Nothing specific is stated, but from what is said I would assume different "speed limits" will cost different amounts.