@Home Network Approaching Shutdown 797
David Harris writes: "A bankruptcy court ruled today that the @Home network will be shutdown at midnight, unless the company reaches new deals with its cable partners and creditors. The decision is a victory for bondholders, owed $750 million by Excite@Home, whose motion asked the court to shutdown the network on grounds that AT&T's $307 million offer to acquire @Home's broadband network is not adequate and fair value for the network could only be found if a shutdown was forced." Read about it on excite.com, while you can. CNet has a good analysis of where things stand. 45% of the cable modem users in North America! Ouch.
First Post (Score:5, Funny)
Re:First Post (Score:3, Insightful)
Dear Cox @ Home Customer:
As you know from our previous emails, Excite @ Home, our vendor in delivering
your Cox @ Home service, filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy protection at the end
of September. We have endeavored to keep you informed of the potential impact
this Bankruptcy could have on your Cox @ Home service and are writing to you
today to provide the latest information we have available.
First, we want you to know that we are committed to providing you uninterrupted
high speed Internet service. Cox Communications has been working diligently in
negotiations with Excite @ Home and using all legal avenues available to protect
you, our valued customer. Meanwhile, we have been forging ahead with our
plans to deliver reliable high speed Internet service to you on our Cox-managed
network. You will soon be receiving additional information about our new Cox
High Speed Internet(sm) service, along with information to help you convert to this
new service.
The latest developments with Excite @ Home:
This month, Excite @ Home's creditors petitioned the Bankruptcy court with a
motion to allow Excite @ Home to terminate service agreements with its cable
affiliates on November 30th. This includes agreements with Cox, Comcast and
AT&T. If the Court grants the creditors' request, there conceivably could be a
temporary disruption in the services that Excite @ Home provides to
approximately 3.7 million customers served by its North American cable affiliates.
We are doing everything possible to see that there will not be a disruption in your
service, but also want you to understand the possibilities and to be prepared:
*If the Judge's ruling states that Excite @ Home may terminate its service
agreements with Cox and the other cable affiliates, this does not mean that
Excite @ Home will automatically turn off the service on November 30th.
*With the Judge's approval, Excite @ Home would then have the ability to make
a decision on termination; however, we are negotiating with them to prevent any
service disruption.
*If Excite @ Home decides to terminate service despite our efforts to negotiate a
temporary arrangement, the question remains as to when the service would be
terminated. We are doing everything we can to ensure that your Cox @ Home
service continues until we can transition you to our new Cox-managed Internet
service. In short, we are doing our best to make sure that you will never be
without high speed Internet service.
Additional help Cox is providing:
In addition to exercising legal avenues, negotiating with Excite @ Home, and
building our own high speed Internet service, Cox is also offering the following to
help you and to keep you informed during this transitional period:
Toll Free Customer Information Line (1-877-832-4751). You can call in for
the latest updates as we work to quickly resolve any service issues.
Website Message Center at Cox.com/info
http://uuhttp.flonetwork.com/cgi-bin3/flo?y=eJI
We will provide online updates and a "Frequently Asked Questions" (FAQ) section to
address your concerns.
Automatic Account Credits. We will credit your account automatically for
service and leased equipment so that you are reimbursed for any time you
are without service.
Free, temporary dial-up Internet access. In the unlikely event that you
should experience a service disruption, we have arranged for temporary
dial-up access to the Internet via NetZero(R). In order to take advantage of
this precautionary option, please see the "What Should I be Doing Right
Now" section that follows.
Cox has a long history of outstanding service in your community. We pride
ourselves on providing high quality products and the best customer service.
Please know that we are committed to our customers and understand the
extent to which you enjoy the services we provide. We recognize that you
have a choice in service providers and we will continue to do our best to
remain your choice now and in the future. In advance, we apologize for any
inconvenience that the Bankruptcy of our vendor Excite @ Home may cause
you.
Stay tuned for more details, and thank you for choosing Cox.
Sincerely,
The Cox High-Speed Internet Team
Cox Communications, Inc.
_______________________________
What Should I be Doing Right Now?
1. Check your Cox @ Home email daily. Opened messages will be saved
automatically to your hard drive.
2. Download free dial-up Internet software. In the unlikely event that Excite
@ Home terminates your service, you would lose connectivity to the Internet and
access to your Cox @ Home services such as email and webspace. We do not
recommend that you install the software at this time, just download the software
and save it so that it may be installed should you have an interruption in service.
In order to restore access to the Internet and to set up a temporary email
address, we recommend that you register for dial-up service via NetZero and
download the necessary software. You will not be able to download the software
from your home after your Internet service has already been disrupted. While a
free dial-up connection is not ideal, it will give you temporary access to the
Internet for surfing, making transactions, etc. However, you will not be able to
access your Cox @ Home email accounts while the service is shut down. For
information on how to download this software, please visit Cox.com/info
http://uuhttp.flonetwork.com/cgi-bin3/flo?y=eJI
3. Back up your personal web page to your hard drive or to a CD. (This is a
good precautionary measure to follow at any time.)
4. In the unlikely event that there is a disruption in service, keep your cable
modem connected to your PC until service is restored.
5. Watch for more information from Cox on the transition of your service to
Cox High Speed Internet. At such time that you can make the transition to our
new service, Cox will be providing you with all of the information you need to make
your transition as smooth as possible.
I'm digging out my external modem as we speak. I hope they figure this out, because I do not know what I will do without my cable modem and
Mo Bandwidth. Mo Problems.
Excite Timeline (Score:5, Insightful)
Not necessarily... (Score:4, Informative)
Capacity for 5 million, while servicing only 10% of that is not a good business plan.
Not necessarily.
Suppose (hypothetically):
Your network will support 5,000,000 subscribers,
Your non-recurring costs are $1/subscriber-month,
Your per-subscriber costs are $10/subscriber-month, and
You charge $50/subscriber-month.
This:
Breaks even at 125,000 subscribers,
Makes $195,000,000/month ($2.3 Billion/yr) at 5,000,000 subscribers, and
Breaks down at 5,000,001 subscribers.
Of course that's not what they did. Nevertheless, they were up to 73.4% of the design capacity of the network by 7/11. So (unless their business model didn't include making a profit until their capacity was saturated) I don't think lack of customers was the problem.
With no data but that timeline I'd wonder if they underestimated their per-user recurring costs (such as support) or their network capacity (which maps back into per-user recurring costs through extra support when they saturate and the connections start to degrade).
Oops. Wrong buzzword. (Score:3, Informative)
Sorry 'bout that.
Excite was drain, not @Home (Score:3, Insightful)
- The "Excite!" portal, and
- The bond payments
However, by shutting the network down they've just destroyed its value. I'll probably be down tomorrow, and if so, I will swiftly arrange for an alternative arrangement on Monday and never return to @Home.-E
Re:Excite was drain, not @Home (Score:3, Informative)
Bonds are an obligation to pay. They are like a credit card with a very high credit limit. If you got a credit card and bought a spiffy Apple Cinema Display with it, you have to pay the money back, but the people who loaned you the money aren't going to get more money if the Cinema Display doubles your productivity.
If you can't pay back the debt, you either renegotiate it - just like a credit card - or go into bankruptcy. If you go into bankruptcy, you probably have to give up your spiffy Cinema Display.
If you issued the bonds to make investments like Blue Mountain Arts, worth nearly a billion at the height of the boom, and then sell it for $30 million, the bond holders (credit card company) get nothing.
But if the business you've built up has value, as Excite@Home does, you can sell the business and pay back the bonds.
The heart of this issue is that AT&T is trying to buy Excite@Home for a bit under 50c on the dollar. Understandably, the bondholders want to sell it for more like 90c so they can get most of their money back. So they are insisting on shutting down the network, because then they will no longer be losing $6 million a month, and they want to convince AT&T to pay more for the assets.
Of course if they actually do shut down, Excite@Home is worth LESS, not more, and AT&T will probably wind up paying LESS for the assets, if it even wants them anymore.
In short, the bondholders' gambit looks like it's failing, and they will wind up getting about 10c on the dollar instead of 50c.
Hope this has been informative.
D
Nooooo! (Score:4, Troll)
*goes and collapses on the floor*
Shutting down bad move for both sides? (Score:4, Redundant)
Re:Shutting down bad move for both sides? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Shutting down bad move for both sides? (Score:5, Insightful)
Seems to me the bondholders are the ones playing chicken. I don't get it: "The network is worth more than you're offering. Pay us more or at midnight the network goes down!" "OK, fine, shut it down; then the network will be worth zero." Seems to me the bondholders made a bad investment and are trying to get their money back. That's the risk they took; they should be big boys and take their lumps, like everyone else who lost on the .com bubble burst. 30 cents on the dollar is better than nothing.
Funny how not too long ago the cable companies said they couldn't possibly allow competition, that @Home was the only game allowed. Too bad they didn't listen to us customers and allow us to choose our own ISP.
AT&T does DSL too, right? (Score:3)
Re:Shutting down bad move for both sides? (Score:2, Interesting)
I don't blame the bondholders for being upset!
BTW -- I'm not biased, I have @Home via Comcast and will likely get shut off if they don't come to an agreement.
Re:Shutting down bad move for both sides? (Score:2)
AT&T couldnt care less, if they couldn't buy it for the offer made then screw em.
They've already got a replacement in place and ready to go tonight. Hmmm att.net will be a nice email address.
Re:Shutting down bad move for both sides? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think occasional massive hiccups like this (and the Northpoint DSL debacle that preceded it) are part of the price of an unregulated industry. We'd see this same kind of brinksmanship and the same sort of politically or financially motivated service outages from our telephone service providers were it not for regulations mandating a scheme of interconnection and settlement fees. But does anyone really want that same sort of regulatory scheme for broadband? I might change my mind later, but it seems like the occasional outage like this one might be the lesser of two pretty big evils.
Re:Shutting down bad move for both sides? (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't know. We've kind of become conditioned to think of government regulation as evil until proven otherwise, but as a former telco guy (I worked at Intermedia Communications, now a part of BorgCom, for five years), there are two things I'd observe:
Honestly, I think "as little regulation as necessary to work" is a laudable goal in nearly any case--but sometimes a little regulation makes the market work better. If cable companies were forced to open their data lines to any local ISPs willing to pay reasonable rates ("reasonable" being roughly defined as "a price which still lets them be competitive with an ISP owned by the cable company itself"), I suspect it would be much better for consumers, better for competing ISPs--and probably ultimately better for cable companies, too.
Re:Shutting down bad move for both sides? (Score:2)
The bond holders would be left with what could be scavenged out of a sale of the company while the cable companies are left with a lot of unhappy customers
Well, speaking as a Cox customer in Rancho Palos Verdes, CA, I think this rocks. I hate @Home ever since they blocked incoming ports 80 and 25. This allows Cox to work a different deal on Internet access. Cox has already been sending out e-mails stating that they have been making other arrangements to provide Internet access.
Everyone I've talked to at Cox has been pretty cool, but they have been at the mercy of the upstream.
Re:Shutting down bad move for both sides? (Score:2, Interesting)
In other words, it was Cox that blocked your ports, and I betcha they will be blocked with Cox after they are on thier own network.
In other words, you ain't gainin' nuttin'...
--knick
As seen on Excite (Score:5, Interesting)
Someone grab a screen shot for the dot-bomb museum, please.
Re:As seen on Excite (Score:5, Informative)
Um, no. Just because it's on excite.com, doesn't make it official. It's actually an AP (Associated Press) newswire story that just about every news web site carries. It just so happens that Excite has a news web site (news.excite.com) that carried the story. It is exactly the same as when the cable television station MSNBC does a story on Microsoft. It's not an official statement from Microsoft, it's just a news organization reporting on a company, that, by coincidence, happens to be its parent company.
Re:As seen on Excite (Score:2, Funny)
Re:As seen on Excite (Score:2)
The rest of the money is probably spent on their internal data lines connecting POPs, devaluation of hardware, facilities costs, insurance, support
We really take cable ISP's for granted. For $40 a month, it's a deal that nobody who wants fast access could pass up.
Re:As seen on Excite (Score:3, Informative)
The rest of the money is probably spent on their internal data lines connecting POPs, devaluation of hardware, facilities costs, insurance, support /administrative /billing /sales staff wages and benefits, etc. It could add up to quite a bit.
Devaluation of equipment? Are you serious?
I do the network admin / deployment at a small (1600 user) ISP. We run around like crazy looking for "ancient" AS5200s because they just plain work. We get 47 lines out of each one (bastards made us use PRIs instead of DEAs so now we "retaliated" by asking for NFAS) and once configured, they just work.
I can't imagine cable being much different: You have your super-expensive head-end for each trunk, and once it is configured, you leave it be. Keep some parts around or, if you've got the cash, a hot spare and your equipment doesn't change. It doesn't devaluate in the sense that it wears out. Your bandwidth costs will be through the roof, yes, but that's what the economy of volume does for you. You have a 30MBit pipe for each trunk, a killer web cache and maybe 155MBit upstream. (I'm guessing here: Bell Canada's HSE (DSL) internet bandwidth overcommit rates being > 100:1, cable's can't be that far off)
The point is that yes the equipment is expensive and the bandwidth is expensive. But the equipment doesn't wear out. I'm sure you can get some pretty sweet deals on bandwidth when you tell your provider that you want enough feeds to service a nation. It had to have been mismanaged. This kind of story isn't new; this particular one just happens to have hit a hell of a lot of people at once.
Re:As seen on Excite (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, that's over 4 million subscribers -- $1.50 per subscriber per week. Would the subscribers not be willing to absorb a price increase of what amounts to a cup of coffee per week to keep their cable modem service? And any more than that, say $2.00 per week, would be a $100 million per year profit. Sure you might lose a few but most would probably pay -- I mean what's the alternative?
Re:As seen on Excite (Score:2, Interesting)
.
Paid in Advance (Score:2)
January. I hope Cox doesn't go down but I am definately going to be asking for
service interruption remebursments.
SealBeater
Damit! @Home ... (Score:5, Funny)
starts looking in the back side of computer boxes to figure our which one has the modem installed
This is logical (Score:4, Interesting)
Time to starting looking for a new provider.
--locust
It's a shame (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't see any reason why Excite won't kill the service tonight. They've got nothing to lose, since they're already bankrupt. Shutting off service just stems the bleeding. The other companies are going to get hurt by this, and it's going to put high-speed internet access in a bad light.
But, I guess this is what happens when one company controls the lion's share of internet access. Back in the day of local ISP's, one of them going under wasn't the end of the world. Can you imagine what would happen if AOL or MSN turned off their service? (and yes, I'm bloody well expecting a smartaleck response there).
I'm just glad I never got rid of my dial up access. I have the feeling my friends are going to be coming over to get their net fix during the outage.
Re:It's a shame (Score:5, Funny)
Immediate eradication of code red and nimda?
Really? What would the downside be?
I dont see (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I dont see (Score:2)
AT&T@Home == excite@Home? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:AT&T@Home ~~ excite@Home? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:AT&T@Home == excite@Home? (Score:5, Informative)
Your AT&T Broadband high-speed cable Internet service connectivity, e-mail and Personal Web pages will not be affected by Excite@Home's Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing. However, your home.excite.com home page may become temporarily unavailable.
What will happen to my high-speed cable Internet service if AT&T Broadband's proposal to purchase the Excite@Home network is not approved?
If the proposal to purchase the Excite@Home network is not approved, your home page content may be temporarily unavailable, but you will still have access to your e-mail and the Internet.
Re:AT&T@Home == excite@Home? (Score:2, Interesting)
Actually, I have a bit of information regarding the @home shutdown. I work for a regional ISP that has business relations with Cox Communications.
Cox has told us that this could potentially lead to chaos on the internet, not only because @home is a major cable internet provider, but also because they have one of the more large national backbones on the internet. However, Cox customers may not have to worry because they have been provisioning the use of other backbones so that their customers would have minimal downtime.
In the end, this may affect a large portion of internet services such as DNS and email. Inappropriate routes may still exist that relay through the @home network, even after the network is shutdown
My employer uses Cox for fibre T1's so we have been advised that such services may not work properly, until this situation is resolved. But for most end-users the result may be serious lag times until certain services get re-routed through other backbones.
r00tdenied
Roadrunner people are safe (Score:2, Informative)
Twostep
Their own fault (Score:5, Informative)
Info for AT&T @ HOME customers (Score:2, Informative)
Why don't WE buy it? (Score:4, Interesting)
Would you pay $250 for a share of your own cablenet company?
-B
Re:Why don't WE buy it? (Score:2)
Seriously ... Why don't WE buy it? (Score:2, Interesting)
If you're a lawyer or MBA who reads
Inquiring minds want to know
Actually, he's a hair low. (Score:3, Interesting)
This really doesn't make sense. (Score:5, Insightful)
Certainly they are not taking in the entire $39.95 each month. The local provider (Cox Cable in my town) obviously takes a portion of that montly bill, but Excite! must still be receiving a ton of money each month.
Moreover, they have a monopoly. In my neighborhood I don't have a choice between Cox and Roadrunner. It's either Cox@Home or a phone modem (we're too far away from the CO for DSL). So they can't be losing customers since there's no compitition. And even if their competition is DSL then their competitors are going out of business as well (whatever happened to Covad?)
Sombody's got to be taking some money home with them at night.
Could it be? (Score:2, Informative)
On the ScreenSavers last night Leo Laporte stated that an insider told him that the service is extremely profitable and that the cable services are waiting for Excite to tank to take over the service for themselves.
Who knows for sure
Re:This really doesn't make sense. (Score:5, Interesting)
I did a quick search of the Excite web site. That same month, they promised to donate up to $3 million to a Meg Ryan-sponsered charity [home.net].
They had a revenue of $113 million [home.net] for that quarter.
The 1999 news site [home.net] has a ton of stuff like this. The 2000 site [home.net] seems to have as much, but the last announcement is in May, 2000.
Does that shed some light on where the money went? Just another company, thinking they would keep getting exponential growth, making money out of nothing, with no provisions for an economic downturn.
I'll miss being a LPB on Counterstrike.
$16.00, not $39.95 (Score:2, Informative)
Re:This really doesn't make sense. (Score:3, Informative)
Nah - they only get about $15 of that $40. The rest stays with the cable company (who is greedly eyeing that $15 for themselves, or selling your ass to Microsoft or AOL for some change).
Furthermore, they have to take all of the customer service calls, which is why they are screwed. They never thought there would be so many slashdotters rubbing their minimum wage idiots' noses into the existence of their NetBSD on Mac IIcx Firewalls. Of course, they wouldn't have had such support costs if their network was better run (but again that's probably because they were undercapitalized by the cable companies who created them, umm, not to mention their dotcrap buying spree).
Those of you who are being cut off will be lucky if you pick up 'just a pipe' service. This could be the big Interactive TV Convergance shakedown that the cablecos have wanted from day 1.
Re:This really doesn't make sense. (Score:3, Funny)
Info For Comcast@home customers (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.comcastonline.com/info.htm
Re:Info For Comcast@home customers (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Info For Comcast@home customers (Score:5, Funny)
I got news for those fuckers. A 300 baud modem is a faster speed than ZERO....
Surprised govt hasn't stepped in... (Score:2, Insightful)
Granted, bandwidth is not a crucial as say water, power, and heat, but to some businesses, it could be make or break. Scary...
Wonder how my EDonkey traffic will be this weekend?
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Service tiers... (Score:2)
Re:Service tiers... (Score:2)
I'm fighting with Cox Road Runner (Fairfax, VA) about policy changes. Although not currently prohibited, it appears that they are trying to pressure residential users that run their own (passworded) FTP servers, Telnet servers, mail, and web servers into buying Cox Business Internet services. One problem: My 1.5mbps download pipe costs $250 on business vs. $40 on residential. Odd too, how they are only discussing these server limitations now that they have a high-priced "business service" to offer.
This is the same thing the phone companies where doing when they found out that someone was running a BBS on their residential line. I wish they would understand that hobbists that know what they are doing aren't sucking tons of bandwidth and would never pay business prices.
Re:Service tiers... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Time for a new poll? (Score:2, Funny)
Who will be most upset by the @home outage?
This could be huge for DSL (Score:5, Informative)
I work in the digital loop carrier industry, and the technology exists to extend DSL broadband to people outside of the normal DSL range of a mile or so from the phone company's Central Office. The company I work for makes a box that allows phone companies to send all their voice and data over fiber (or copper, or wireless) to a remote terminal, and then it's from THAT point that the 1 mile limitation kicks in.
The problem for John Q. Dialup is that the phone companies are just too big and slow to put this technology out in the field. Our stuff is just now going through testing in SBC, but how long it will be before a large number of people can live 10 miles from the Central Office and still get DSL is anybody's guess.
Right now, many of the people with the best broadband opportunities are actually rural customers! This technology I'm talking about is pretty attractive to smaller Mom & Pop phone companies because due to the low initial cost of this particular product.
I got lucky: my aparment complex just happens to fall into one of SBC Ameritech's DSL sweet spots. I think when I get around to getting a house, I'm going to be looking very closely at the DSL availability!
SCREW COMCAST (Score:2)
I pay $85 per month for internet, and cable service for my TV, and I do not have a single premium channel. In fact I just was notified today that rates have gone up another 6% or so.
If Comcast shuts me off tonight, and thats who effectively would be pulling the plug, I will be on the horn tomorrow to have Comcast take every cable they have out of this house ASAP.
I will then call a satellite provider and have them provide me TV service.
I will then patiently wait for DSL and keep an eye on stellite service. Perhaps I will even get a T1 and share with my neighbors.
I am up to here with Cable arrogance. They are the only technology related thing that costs more over time for less service.
"Slightly" raised offer ??? (Score:2)
Well, if their bid fails, I volunteer to help AT&T get rid of the slight $93M difference. ...
These guys have a strange concept of the value of money I reckon
I'd like to see an explanation of HOW this happens (Score:3, Interesting)
There are two ways to make a business profitable. Reduce costs or increase income.
I would have thought that a cable service could increase it's monthly charges and still made money. They would have lost some customers to DSL but a lot of customers don't have any other choice. If it takes $60/month/user to make money then that's what has to be charged.
So let's see... As far as broadband goes, we've lost Northpoint, Rhythms, Covad just filed chapter 11. AT&T and Excite(Cox?) just filed chapter 11.
Who is left?
SWBell is my local phone company and they have DSL. Surprise that all their competitors went out of business considering SWBell was providing the lines.
I think we either need to make a concious decision:
A. We don't want to let the phone company sell DSL, and we don't want the Cable company to provide cable access only provide the lines so other companies can resell.
B. We want the phone and cable companies to be the sole providers of the service and the line. We want it to be government regulated to keep us from getting screwed and to set prices.
Personally, I vote for A.
What is everyone else's toughts?
Re:I'd like to see an explanation of HOW this happ (Score:2)
Man... 45% of cable modem subscribers? I hadn't realised it was quite this big.
Correct me if I am wrong, but weren't these guys supposed to be competing heroically with each other in good free market fashion to benefit the consumer, rather than killing each other off and then dying like dinosaurs? Counting the dead services barely six hours before 45% of the US cable market goes dark, I kinda wonder if that deregulated free market stuff really works.
If anyone else had DONE this to us it'd be a freaking act of war (news flash! bin laden kills 45% of America's cable modem infrastructure in a suicide attack!) but because it was done by free market capitalism we're supposed to nod and go 'well done'? riiiiiight.
I'd say we best be careful at this point, or maybe next year our regular PHONE companies and power utilities will be the ones plunging 45% of the country into darkness- not from terrorist attack, but because they fought in the 'free' market, screwed up, and lost... Imagine this happening to electric power and not cable modem service. It's not unthinkable, all it requires is a certain amount of corporate stupidity, big debt, and a downward spiral. See 'Dilbert' for more details...
/me points and laughs (Score:2)
Wow, this really sucks (Score:3, Insightful)
Cable modems via Cox came to the neighborhood back in August and I quickly signed up and I believe I have a final payment to make on the cable modem purchased.
I just shut off my 2nd line and dial up provider - now it seems that may have been a rash move. Cox has a info page up saying they're going to "negotiate into the night" to set up a stopgap arrangement to keep us online, but I'm pessimistic as it seems that outside of a ridiculous amount of loot deposited to Excite, there's not a lot of incentive to be agreeable.
The judge's commentary really irks me. Yes, for many, the net is not a necessity. But for people like me who rely on it for work and my wife who needs access for school, it is a utility on par with the phones and electricity. It seems that the customer counts last - do these idiots (Excite creditors) think they'll get any more money if there is any lengthy service disruption? I suppose many of us have to take without viable alternatives - here, no DSL is available and the other alternatives (Sprint Broadband, satellite) are unreliable and unsuitable for games and conferencing (according to their own sales brochure material that caused me to cancel an order for those services) - DSL and cable modems (outside of a T1 line) are the only viable options for the home user.
Excite.com Isn't Going Away (Score:2, Informative)
Quote the site:
You may have recently read about issues with Excite@Home's broadband service. Don't worry. Excite.com and the broadband service are operated completely separately. Whatever you may hear about Excite@Home broadband, cable or ISP will have no affect on this site. You will continue to enjoy the same great content and personalized services. In fact, we're adding more fun and useful services to make Excite even better.
Is this right. News.com seems to disagree... (Score:5, Informative)
1) that the parties must go back to the bargaining table
2) that the service being disconnected was unlikely
What it sounds like happened is that the judge said they can cut the contracts but there is nothing right now saying affirmatively that the service will be shut off. Basically this just means it is legal for excite to cancel the existing contracts so that they can re-negotiate them.
So I don't think excite is out yet...
If you let @Home go under... (Score:5, Funny)
Time for a Congressional bailout.
P.S. It's for the children...
cheapo billion-dollar companies (Score:2, Interesting)
It is because of providers like ATT that Excite is in this position to begin with. Of your $45/mo bill, Excite only sees $16 - and they are the ones providing the damn service.
Maybe by shutting down, Excite will put ATT where they belong.
What's important is *why* they can't stay afloat. (Score:2)
Facts for Cox users (Score:2, Informative)
Slashdot shouldn't sensationalize headlines (Score:2, Informative)
Alternatives..... FAST! (Score:2)
Neighborhood based internet is probably the best option. Let the neighborhoods wire themselves up to each other, then pool the monthly fees for one or two high speed RELIABLE uplinks, something like a fractional T3 for a moderately sized neighborhood. This is basiclly the design of cable internet anyways, only it will be under the control of those who are actually using it. And they can dictate their own policy. And if you have a warez kiddy in the neighbhood abusing the service for everyone, you KNOW WHERE HE LIVES, and the problem can be delt with properly.
And if the entire nighbhorhood is wired on the same network, people can each install a wireless ethernet hub and make the entire neighbhorhood wireless ready. If every subdivision would do this, you'll basically have citywide ethernet speed internet coverage.
How to handle the abusers and other problem people? That remains to be seen. And its a problem that someone will need to deal with. @home's solution was to cap the upstream and piss off everyone. Maybe we can do better.
Ok.. off the soapbox for now. Time to go pay the phone bill.
-Restil
Will Seti@Home be shut down too? (Score:2, Funny)
A win-win situation (if you are AT&T) (Score:2)
Okay, so let's assume for the moment that excite shuts down. Fine, AT&T loses some money there because they are an investor, but suddenly all of their cable competitors don't really have an Internet service alternative. On the other hand it sounds like AT&T has been building up their own network infrastructure for a while now. So this could put them in the position of selling services direct to their competitors which puts them in an awfully good position.
EVIL CORPORATE PLAN B:
Now, if AT&T can pick up excite for a song, then they end up in the exact same position but it works out even better for them financially because then they've got an already existing infrastructure and with the built in connections to their competitors. This short cuts the hassles that would be involved in EVIL CORPORATE PLAN A.
Now on to my personal rant...
The thing that bothers me in all of this is that AT&T, in the interests of "maximizing shareholder value" should play the game this way. And I'm sure that any of the other competitors would be happy to play the game that way if they had the opportunity to. I'm just so sick of the whole "screw everybody out of their money" game that corporate american seems to have evolved into. It'd be nice if I could watch a commercial by AT&T or SBC or any of the other big telecom companies, that talked about customer service and quality and not spit out my drink from laughing so hard.
AT&T and Static IPs (Score:3, Informative)
Here's what I found out:
+ The chat person said flat-out that AT&T does not support static IPs and that I was basically hosed. She referred me to the Win32 "configurator" executable on the http://newuser.attbi.com website. I didn't bother asking for a linux version.
+ The phone person said that since everything was so new that they didn't have their act together for static IPs yet and to run dynamic for a couple weeks until things settle down.
Either way, I'm stuck on DHCP for a while, but the phone support seemed to imply there was some light at the end of the tunnel once the initial rush of problems are sorted out. For me, this is only an issue for remote access since my internal network is all NATted anyhow.
My guess is that the Excite --> AT&T transition would be completely transparent to those on DHCP who renew their leases after midnight.
And of course, if they try to force me to stay on DHCP, there's always DSL...
Comcast Online Customer Information Hotline update (Score:3, Informative)
I am a Comcast@home subscriber in the Metro Detroit area and had unresponsive DNS this morning but they're responding now.
Re:45%? Ouch. (Score:2)
Like, the IP addresses belong to @home, no?
Certainly, the infrastructure in a given place belongs to that cable company, and they have the equipment to proceed, but not necessarily the upstream network links, which may belong to excite..
Re:45%? Ouch. (Score:2)
If I remember correctly, the analogy is similar to comparing a phone company and a dialup ISP. The cable companies are like the phone companies, they provide the wiring, the hardware, and the ability to connect. @Home is the ISP, providing the IPs and servers and connection to the Internet as a whole. The cable companies signed on with @Home, and once @Home is gone the hardware's still there but there's no server to go to. It's a modem without an ISP, simple as that.
Re:Not a surprise (Score:2)
By the way, this is not a cutting-edge yuppie complex- we live in an older residential area and many of our neighbors are little old ladies who emigrated from eastern Europe post WWII. They don't seem to hog the bandwidth much...
Re:Not a surprise (Score:2)
Thank you iComcast.
Re:Not a surprise (Score:5, Insightful)
DSL - tried to get it a year ago, and I'm just a bit too far away from the CO to get service. It will probably take 3 visits and 3 mornings off of work to verify that I can't get DSL - and even then, I'll never have official word, just the hearsay from a disgruntled tech.
802.11b wireless - Several providers? What part of the country is that again? Here in my corner of the midwest, there are a few less options.
Satellite - "Games are wasteful of valuable bandwidthm especially given the current shortage". Guess us gamers should go the e-ghetto where we belong...
T1 - This would be a great option if a) I had the expertise to set this up in a timely manner b) I had the capital to pay for the initial equipment c) I knew ANY neighbors in a mile radius that would pay for a connection and the 802.11b equipment. Sorry, it's not really viable right now.
Dialup. See Satellite.
Sorry. I got a cable modem because I like an always on connection, and I really enjoy online games. I kept it because it really enhances the online gaming experience, even on my (comparatively) slow machine, and it helps facilitate my new linux habit (45 minutes to download an ISO image from a public server).
But hey, thanks for making me feel like an idiot for going for the fast, easy, cheap option and not investigating the other lame-ass offers in town.
Re:Not a surprise (Score:2, Informative)
Let's take these one at a time, shall we?
Yup. Lots of options. Hell, I was lucky to even get cable. All of these companies offering DSL or cable wonder why they fail miserably when people can't even sign up if they want to. Makes sense to me...
You can't tell me they weren't making a profit with at least 4 MILLION customers, especially when they're operating over ALREADY EXISTING cable infrastructure! What are they building their equipment out of, 24k gold?
Re:Not a surprise (Score:2)
Fuck you, too, elitist moron!
The end of the world as we know it (Score:2)
Since a lot of spammers are on @home, this will open up bandwidth. And various files probably have been mirrored around the world.
So the end result is that is that the internet load level will drop substantially. Even if all those guys go to dialup with Juno or get high speed via AOL.
Looks like the next few days are going to be great for surfing if you are not affected. Although I wonder how many porn sites are going to go down when Excite collapses?
Re:I'm sorry, but -- Good Riddance. (Score:2)
Congratulate me.. I am going off the net tonight. Why would I be going off the net in this time that I have to send back graded work (I grade for professors) and I have to register for classes (online only) AND I am going to have to d/l all my coursework/study sheets for my exams that start next Thurs? Why am I going off? Because I am an @home user..
How about this... I am happy that you dont give a damn about @home users leaving -- all because you are getting some spam from @home users. And if I suggested I hope that whatever-state-your-in takes away your drivers license b/c there have been too many "drunk drivers" from your state/country/whatever, I suppose I would be correct by your logic.
Get over it. There are more people losing access tonight than your spammers... people who dont even have modems in their computers any more, who have depended on a dedicated connection for the last K years are losing it too...
Re:I'm sorry, but -- Good Riddance. (Score:2)
Hopefully (for everyone involved), more responsible providers will take its place soon.
Re:I'm sorry, but -- Good Riddance. (Score:2)
The average notebook size (what they turn in -- electronic notebook with their work in it) is 3.43 mb.. I have 15 notebooks to grade per class... do the math..
Re:I'm sorry, but -- Good Riddance. (Score:2)
Thank god for AOL Time Warner, and their partnering with RoadRunner! (Dosen't AT&T own RoadRunner now, or something?..)
</sarcasm>
Had to say it.
Hey, slashdot coders, if i wanted to have to type & lt; and & gt; all the time I wouldn't use the 'Plain Ol Text' option as my default...
Re:I'm sorry, but -- Good Riddance. (Score:2, Insightful)
45% of cablemodem users != 45% of users
Re:Canada? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Will I lost my access? (Score:2, Informative)
/gleffler
Re:Also AT&T? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Who cares ? (Score:2)
So, in short, yes, Excite@Home sucks rocks, but the infrastructure they are running on here in Massachusetts is top rate, and was built out by MediaOne which unfortunately got gobbled up by AT&T. If I could pick and choose a better ISP and keep my cable service, I would in a second (an ISP that doesn't force me to pretend I'm rebooting my theoretical Win98 box which is theoretically connected directly to the cable modem rather than through a firewall, to refresh a DHCP address, so I can prove to them that they have a router on the fritz).
Re:Cox@Home (Score:2)
Re:Why Comcast says we shouldn't leave! (Score:2)
Nope (Score:3, Informative)