Excite@Home May Have To Call It Quits

Plazm writes: "C|net has a story (printer friendly version, of course) that just cropped up this morning about Excite@Home being in financial trouble. Will they befall the same fate as Covad and Loki? Good thing I just purchased my cable modem and broadband service through @Home last week so they could go out of business the next."

Given they're reputation...

for (no) customer service, it's not really surprising. I have never heard anything positive said about excite@home

I have a DRY sense of humor

I can see it now. Hungry unemployed IT workers lined up at the @homeless shelter.

Blame it on Pets.com and their shareholders

I can see it now. Hungry unemployed IT workers lined up at the @homeless shelter.

Ugh. The wolf is @ our door, boys and girls.

I blame it all on people who were stupid enough to buy shares of a company that promised to save consumers money by FedExing a $4.00, 30lb bag of kitty litter across the country. $21 shipping bill later, two day delivery time, versus going to the local bricks-and-mortar pet shop at the local mall, shelling out $6 and having a happy cat right away.

<sarcasm>There's a good business model. How can it fail?</sarcasm>

<more_sarcasm>Now that e-tailers have been brought back to reality and Napster is dead for all practical purposes, there's still no reason for broadband. No need for the convenience and power of having all the world's information at your fingertips. No reason why an AOL dialup account can't satisfy all your surfing needs.</more_sarcasm>

And now, as a result of idiocy of that scale across virtually the entire stock market, I find myself unemployed and unable to find a decent job. This really sucks.

Re:Blame it on Pets.com and their shareholders

You're posting on Slashdot so I assume you have some common sense.

ROFLMAO! They need to mod your post to +5 Funny! By far the funniest post I've read today :)

Not Lamenting Capitalism.

Welcome to the real world. See that? I'm crying. Oh, woe is you. That's called capitalism. That's the "old economy" for you.

Very, very true. And, based on the karma hits I've taken for espousing a Libertarian philosophy, I do want you to understand that I'm not down about that.

The problem is that tech seems to be a bad word now, especially to headhunters. I don't have 14 university degrees; what I have is a practical hands-on ability, honed by 17 years of computer experience, to make systems work in real-world environments.

Have you been to a headhunter lately? It pains me when they're asking for MCSEs. *MCSEs*. I used to have MCSEs under me; they'd ask me questions like why they have to type an IP address to point to a domain name server, or how to prevent HIMEM.SYS loading when the machine starts up. (I've ranted about this on Slashdot before.) It's a paper qualification, not indicative of any real insight into how a Windows machine works. Nor do I even wish to be trapped in the Windows prison. Yet, headhunters seem to want it. [sigh]

Who the hell came up with this "new economy" slogan anyways? Exactly what is so "new" about it? Nothing, other than the fact that a bunch of young, naive idiots managed to convince some old money that their ideas were "foolproof" as in "you fools can't tell we've got no idea what the hell we're doing."

Engineering saying: Make something foolproof, and someone comes along and builds a better fool.

But here you are whining about your misfortune. Are you mad you were suckered in too? Are you bitter because you feel it was "owed" to you? Do you think you have it hard? You're probably an intelligent person and you can probably actually perform your job duties.

I like to think I'm intelligent. Actually, I did write the Mensa test, and I passed it. Even went to a couple of Mensa meetings, but got bored with hanging around with people who had nothing better to do than attempt to demonstrate to each other how intelligent they are.

No, I didn't get suckered in by the new economy. The problems were evident all the way along. For the most part, it's failing e-tailers that seem to have dragged everything else down. Well, using a mail-order analogy, why would you buy a bag of kitty litter by mail-order when there's a pet store right down the street?

E-tailing, of course, has its merits. Mail order (which is all that e-tailing really is) cannot be beaten as a way of buying specialized items. Antique car parts. Strange transistor types. Even that needlepoint pattern that my best friend's girlfriend has been looking all over for.

In the frucus before the bubble burst, it seemed that people had lost sight of common sense, and we've all been dragged down because of it. I lament *that*, not capitalism.

That alone puts you ahead of most of the other lobos (think lobotomy) "looking" for a job (more accurately, looking for a new job that's exactly like their old job).

Well, I'm not looking for something exactly like my old job, no. I'd prefer something where my combination of electronics, computers and technical writing experience can work together to save/make my new employer money. But, at this point, I have a friend who is a tow truck driver, and I've been moonlighting doing that and a few other things to pay the bills.

Maybe try and industry that isn't part of the "new economy."

Certainly have. There's no aversion for me to work for a bricks-and-mortar company. I've never worked for a start-up. I've always worked for established companies. That's not to say that I wouldn't love the excitement and pace of a new venture - I would. All the run-off from failed dot-coms are swamping every other sector, and that makes it pretty hard for your signal to rise above the noise and reach the ear of a potential employer.

One of the reasons I've been posting to Slashdot a *lot* lately is to get myself heard by like-minded people who might even be in hiring positions. So far, it's worked reasonably well, I've been getting hundreds of hits a day to my website, and many of those hits check out my resume.

Try civil service. Perhaps the police, fire department, military, IRS, FBI, etc. They're not going away any time soon.

I live in Toronto, and I've already done that.

I'm an able-bodied white, anglo-saxon protestant male. WASP. With employment equity in full force across all levels of Canadian government, I submitted my resume, clicked off the boxes asking me my ethnicity and stuff, and received a couple of e-mails back telling me that I didn't reflect the demographics they desired.

If you can't find a job locally, it's time to move. "Oh, I can't move, I love it here." You'll love it too, when you can't pay your rent and you're out on the street.

At this point, gladly. Gladly. I live in Toronto, the heart of all of Canada's commerical and industrial activity. Toronto is Canada's equivalent to New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Detroit all rolled into one. And it's still pretty dead here. Ottawa is the other option, and it's very similar to Silicon Valley; it's even got the nickname, "Silicon Valley North". With Mitel, Corel, Nortel and innumerable failed start-ups, it's hurting even more than Toronto. So, unless an employer were to see my resume and decide that they wished to sponsor me for immigration into the United States, those are my options, and Toronto is decidedly better than Ottawa at the moment.

Take charge of your life.

Of course. I'm motivated almost to the point of obsessiveness about reaching goals.

It's hard to stay optimistic and upbeat when you set a goal of finding a job by the end of the week, and again it doesn't happen.

I've stood at Bay and King (Toronto's equivalent to Wall Street) in my best suit, holding up a sign that says "Computer Geek For Hire.... Will Work For Bandwidth". Because of the humorous and practical approach, I got a lot of attention - even so far as a couple of TV interviews. Got to pass out lots of resumes and follow up with lots of people who gave me business cards.

And from all that, *one* interview. One. I present myself well, and I'm friendly and professional. Needless to say, I didn't get that job. (They were looking for an Assembly language programmer. I haven't written in Assembly in over ten years now.)

Even though I remind myself that it's a numbers game, the truth is that when someone quits a job in the IT department at a bank or something, generally, they don't seem to re-hire.

Computer geeks seem to have become about as desireable as 8-tracks.

You took a chance at (fame and) fortune and you lost. If you don't want to lose, don't play the game.

Don't have much choice, do I? Again, I'm not lamenting capitalism. I'm lamenting the idiocy of those who built the tech bubble up so much that when it burst, it affected companies and people with sound business ideas and skills.

You'll never get rich when you're unemployed.

Tell me about it.

Congratulations are in order.

Ironic that you now face being shunted into Microsoft environments - or out of technology -by the free market that your philosophy extolls as the engine of excellence.

Ironic and sad, yes.

Both laissez-faire capitalism and communism rely on the existence of humans that don't exist yet: the former on perfectly rational, completely informed agents, the latter on completely fair, totally socialized comrades. The failures of each system are based on the fact that humans are not that easy to reinvent.

Congratulations, you have done what few lack the ability to do: change my viewpoint.

Through your concise and relevant comment, you have managed to make me re-think a couple of points. While I'm still fundamentally a Libertarian, there has long been a need to have some sort of government intervention in the Microsoft monopoly, a rare exception to my usual philosophy of letting the free market decide.

But this does reinforce the need for a truly impartial government to oversee all facets of the running of a society; as one of the few moderates who hasn't simply posted "socialism is best" or some other similar rant, your point has reminded me that the balance does remain the best system. Certainly, in Canada, all levels of government provide substantial roadblocks to creating your own business, as an example; controls need to remain (as much as I loathe to admit it), though they should be simpler, more streamlined and efficient than those currently in place.

Re:right time?

Excite@home is not going broke from their cable internet service. They are going broke from keeping up their stupid excite.com. They spend millions of dollars each month keeping a worthless portal that loses money at an astounding rate, for no reason other than that they might be able to sell it at some point, if anyone is stupid enough to invest in a failed web site. Excite needs to immediately shut down all things related to excite.com PERMANENTLY, lay off all the staff related to it, and then raise their cable rates.

Of course, being a bastion of the new economy, they will continue with their idiotic business plan, allowing their dotcom dreams to shut down what could be a successful broadband operation.

so much for competition in Canada

So if excite@home goes under, does that mean large chunks of Canada will only have one broadband ISP? (Telus in BC & Alberta as both Shaw & Rogers networks are part of excite@home).

If so, will Telus (or whoever it is in your province) leave broadband at $40CDN a month? Are the rumors that they're required by the government to keep it that low really true?

And even more importantly. Do we get to keep our cable modems? ;)

Loki isn't gone yet!

Will they befall the same fate as Covad and Loki?

Loki has just filed chapter 11 (protection from creditors) not chapter 7 (liquidation). Please don't call Loki gone until they do. They still have a very good chance to pull through.

Other major organizations have filed chapter 11, and still are major companies to this day. Sorry this is a touch off topic, but Loki ain't dead yet.

Possible reason

I used to work for an @Home MSO. (I forget the meaning of the acronym, basically they resell @Home internet connectivity over their own cable lines.) Well anyways, after the initial year of the 5 year service contract with @Home, a lot of them employees stopped liking them so much. In fact, a lot of the IT guys that were really happy with @Home's network layout, were getting kind of upset with their technical contacts within @Home. Stuff like poor response time, terrible email/news server uptimes. Generally, customers would bitch and bitch about miscellaneous problems with their service, and @Home would take weeks to fix them. Even minor issues would take days. (How hard is it to kill an email account and create a new one with the same name?!)

So what is the solution? Simple. You have a customer base, you have people pratically breaking your doors down to get your service, but you can't stand the ISP you're going through. Let's see...cable company with lots of money...needs high speed internet backbones...money...backbones...hey, doesn't MCI, the Bells, Sprint, Qwest, and about 100 other telco/data service companies sell internet connections??? Hey, lets get our own OC-192!

And thus, @Home doesn't get the contract renewal when the current one runs out. Not only that, but these contracts are specified in terms of geographical area, not just in terms of the companies that signed it. So, if the cable company expands (which they always are), nothing says that the new customers have to be @Home customers. The cable company can use their revunues from existing @home customers to build an independant infrastructure, and use that to independantly serve all new customers outside of the original area.

Result? @Home doesn't make enough money to cover their startup costs. And they file chapter 7 within years of initial creation.

@home is the 'backend'

Cable companies give you the link to the @home backbone, @home gives web access, mail, homepage, startpage, and a stupid browser skin...

Cable companies are doing fine, they'll just need to dump you out onto the web from somewhere else and find you a different email service. Personally, I think what they offered as a start page was revenue generating comercially driven trash. Sales pitches weaved into the headlines like they're something new and all that kind of lame stuff. I'm going to be glad to see them go. this will speed up the opening of cable networks and give options when you sign up for cable modem connnections.

Giant Honking Market Opportunity

If you wanted to get into the broadband deployment arena, now would be a really good fscking time to do so.

Fiber pipes nationally are wildly underlit nationally, DWDM technology is continuing to advance at a breakneck pace, and, relevant to this article, you'll have have no more competition, save Baby Bell DSL offerings.

Team up with the power companies! They own the rights of way to metro and suburban wiring ways and "telephone" poles already. (A "telephone" pole should be called a "power" pole because most of the time the telephone company is leasing space from the power company to string telephone wires on it!) They're being hit bad by this whole deregulation bit and are losing quite a bit of money. They'd be delighted to find a potential new revenue stream, especially in a market that's clamoring for access, but has no outlet.

Supply and Demand -- there's a dwindling supply and a growing demand. Market forces dictate that someone's gotta have the "can-do" to get the power companies to plug people in.

(BTW, I am not talking about using the power lines for transmission of data (many issues w/that), I'm talking about turning power companies into ISPs by stringing fiber along their rights of way.)

Someone go out there and do it!

The problem with broadband in the US

It costs on average for a small ISP 1,500-2,000$ for a T1 (1.5mbs) Internet link. This is in addition to the 400-600$ for the local loop charges. It costs 12,000$ give or take for a partial T3 (45mbs). With broadband companies trying to give every residential customer between 350kbps and 1.5mbps of bandwidth for 39.95$ a month, the figures just do not add up. When you provide someone a service they will use it simply because they can. This means that the broadband companies must add additional bandwidth to handle the users that abuse the system. This increases costs and ensures that they can not afford to continue to offer the service. What is required in my opinion is legislation (waits for the boos and hisses to stop) to require the Regional Bell Operating companies to lower the over priced bandwidth costs to the Internet service companies. I do not mean just for the large corporations but also for the mom and pop ISP's in your neighborhood. If the bandwidth is available to the ISP's they can then turn around and make it available for their users.

F*cking idiots at @Home

As an @Home customer, it pisses me off that they took a solid infrastructure business and wrecked it because they wanted to be Yahoo. Broadband over cable TV lines -- simple, powerful, doable. By now they should be rich enough to found a quasi-nation and buy an aircraft carrier [google.com]. Or whatever they would want to do with $10^10.

But no, instead they got feverish with dotcom mania. They really thought that megabit internet access was just a stepping stone to the real money -- banner ad revenue on their web portal. I'm not making this up, honest! That's why they spent $780 million on BlueMountain [cnet.com], a loss-leader greeting card site, among other dot-bombs.

So now they're low on cash and their backbone needs maintenance (duh). If they shut off cable modem service I'll have to smack someone. I'd rather commute to my office than use phone modem again.