Some People @Home, Some Not @Home

11thangel writes: "Dotcomscoop is reporting that Excite@home has released a statement saying that they have discontinued service to AT&T, as it's certain negotiations will be fruitless. All others are still at the bargaining table. Earlier statements indicated that an example would be made out of one provider, AT&T being the obvious target. Everyone else keep your fingers crossed." There's a Reuters story about AT&T being unplugged. Various submissions have noted that some people who still have connectivity have lost their DNS servers. Just add "64.28.67.150 slashdot.org" to your hosts file and you should be good to go. :)

Don't mean to burst anyone's bubble..

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know if any one noticed this... but posting DNS Server addresses on the web probably won't do people who can't reach a DNS server much good.

Although the addresses are nice to have for reference... I doubt posting this information here is going to be very useful for someone already have it.

Re:more dns #'s

[jallen02]

This gets said quite a bit. "Why does america xyz telecommunications service suck SOOOOO bad compared to abc countries xyz service?"

Most other countries in the world are smaller. In some cases you can service an entire country with a stupidly small amount of infrastructure. Here in the states we are a huge sprawling country and rolling out a service to the ENTIRE country at once is plain damn tough. It is huge. Infrastructure takes time. It costs MONEY a lot more money to deploy that much infrastructure. Then you have to look at the demand for such services. Even at 40 a pop.

I always get annoyed when people say "Why does'nt america have cool cellular networks like europe etc."

because america is a big place and it costs money!

... Just my .02.

Jeremy

Bad, stupid move by Excite@home...

[kcbrown]

By turning off all their subscribers, Excite@home has effectively made an enemy of AT&T. Now that they've done this, I see one of two outcomes:

1. Excite@home will turn the services back on and take the offer they were given (if that's even possible!)

   or

2. AT&T will finish transitioning their customers to their own internal network and tell Excite@home to go fsck themselves.

So if Excite doesn't turn their network back on VERY soon, like in the next day or so, they're toast: AT&T has the cash and resources to manage their cablemodem subscribers themselves. Once Excite@home no longer has anyone hooked up to their network, their value will drop through the floor.

In short, even though the offer they were given probably wasn't very good (it was probably really bad, actually), now that they've shut down their customers they're dead. And if I were AT&T, I'd see to it that the floor was wiped with Excite@home in retaliation for screwing over my customers.

The only variable I know of here that can affect the outcome is the rate at which cablemodem subscribers bail out and go with some other service, for those that can. Since it takes at least a couple of weeks for most DSL connections to be provisioned and configured, the only immediate competition that AT&T will lose customers to is dialup, which isn't terribly comparable. So I think AT&T is pretty safe when it comes to keeping their customers for the next couple of weeks. As long as they can transition the vast majority of their customers in that amount of time, they're safe, and that means that Excite@home has managed to fsck themselves good with this idiotic move.

Heh

[autopr0n]

Actualy, my hosts file looks like this:

127.0.0.1 localhost
127.0.0.1 ads.x10.com
127.0.0.1 www.consumerinfo.com
127.0.0.1 actionsplash.com
127.0.0.1 ad.doubleclick.com
127.0.0.1 www.travelzoo.com
127.0.0.1 popup.msn.com
64.113.72.34 autopr0n.com
Gaping assholes I can deal with. The ads still pop up, but they show my own home page instead. (he last entry was from a time I lost DNS service and couldn't resolve my own site. It was vhosted so using the IP in the URL wouldn't work)

Re:AT&T Tried This Before with NorthPoint

[sbrown123]

AT&T was not to blame for this. They offered to buy the bankrupt company. I hate to say it, but when your bankrupt, any offer is a good offer. But the bondholders at Excite were a bit arrogant and felt that by threating AT&T and the cable companys with cutting service they could force AT&T to buy them at a higher cost.

That was extreme stupidity on thier part. It now appears AT&T, and maybe all the cable providers, are migrating away. What does that leave? A bankrupt Excite with no takers. Those bond holders now hold a stack of crap paper with no value.

I applaud AT&T for thier resolute stand in this matter. I hope those greedy bond holders get what they deserve.

For those who feel AT&T and the cables are just greedy companies....they are. But they do care about thier customers and have done thier best to continue thier service. Excites move to shut off service just shows their business model which explains much of why they are bankrupt. Goodbye Excite I wont miss you.