Chapter 11 For Excite@Home 141
n8twj writes: "According to this story at CNET News, Excite@Home, the leading provider of broadband Internet access, said Friday it will file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and sell its high-speed network to AT&T for $307 million in cash."
jgbrown adds: "@Home files for Chapter 11, they are going to sell their assets to AT&T unless they get a higher offer. Here is a Yahoo News link." An Anonymous Coward adds a link to a story at cnnfn.com." Just like Loki and Exodus, this doesn't mean that Excite@Home has dropped off the face of the earth -- it does mean that are seeking legal protection from creditors in an attempt to reorganize.
How with this affect Canadian customers? (Score:1, Interesting)
Letter From Rogers to it's customers (Score:3, Interesting)
To: All Rogers @Home high speed Internet customers
A couple of weeks ago we made a commitment to keep you updated on any
developments regarding Excite @Home in the U.S.
Yesterday Excite @Home announced that it has agreed to sell its high-speed
Internet access assets to AT&T, pending court approval. We are very pleased
with this announcement as Rogers has worked well with AT&T in the past and
continues to do so. As you may know, AT&T is one of the largest
communications companies in the world.
At the same time, Excite filed for bankruptcy protection under Chapter 11 of
the United States Bankruptcy Code. This action allows Excite to remain in
control of its business and provides it with protection from creditors
pending completion of the sale.
Please be assured that our commitment to you remains to provide you with
the best high speed Internet service.
We will continue to update you on a regular basis so that you remain
informed.
Alek Krstajic
Senior Vice President and General Manager
Rogers @Home
The President's Analyst (Score:3, Interesting)
AT&T is thinking about selling it's broadband access to AOL, and this deal is likely just intended to sweeten the pot. Imagine, AOL as the one true broadband provider/movie studio/tv news outlet/browser company/music label? Yep, time to start a dialup ISP in MY area
I have a feeling that... (Score:4, Interesting)
AT&T, the company that U.S. government broke into pieces due to antitrust, is gaining back gradually its monopoly position. Looking at the telecom market in the U.S., the breakup was not particularly effective and comparing to the mobile cellular phone technology of NTT's DoCoMo or of Europe, the U.S. technology in this area sucks.
The Internet phenomenon that was led by the U.S. was due to the invention of HTTP and web browser and the router and backbone explosion was simply a knee-jerk reaction to the growth of WWW -proving that the telecom market has not been very healthly.
This brings us the question: what is the best remedy for MS if breakup might not be successful?
Do you think AT&T would continue to block port (Score:2, Interesting)
Cringely Right Again (Score:5, Interesting)
Remind me to buy stock in Cringely if he ever IPOs.
Re:@Home, AT&T, and Comcast (Score:2, Interesting)
It's sad that AT&T's president is running around asking "Please buy this... I'll take anything... Please!!! buy this!!!"
I just wish that the stock-holders of AT&T had some backbone and fired the entire executive branch and replaced them with a group that is interested in making broadband work instead of making a few dollars quickly when things are tight. AT&T broadband is full of the best and brightest Last year we had lots of cash do do the work, this year we recieved 1/5th of that and still preformed the work (Finding no-cost solutions like Linux for example) and next year we expect 0 funding above bare-minimum operating costs... I will still impliment a fax server (linux based)and a document management system (Linux based).. Both of which would have cost $50,000 each if based under windows 2000 (I priced them out with quotes 2 years ago, so those are pretty darn close in actual cost)
Comcast could be a good thing for Broadband. Anyone know if they are hostile to non MS solutions? AT&T has always been open to it and the Computer and Network Acceptable use polocy specifically states that any free or GNU software is fully allowed to get work done in the company.
how about charter?
Fate of @Home (Score:4, Interesting)
- Sell it off. Yahoo!, MSN or AOL could buy Excite to gain customers, Viacom or Disney could buy it to gain a (better) web presence, but chances are no one would pay enough to make it worth the effort for AT&T.
- Turn it into an AT&T Broadband-only network. Essentially, AT&T could take the current http://home.excite.com/ page, turn that into http://www.attathome.com/, merge the user databases, and ditch the rest of Excite (so you'd have to be a paying customer to use it). This is probably more likely, but if AT&T's planning on selling off Broadband anyway, it may only take time away from negotiations with another cable company.
- Don't do anything yet. AT&T would pretty much make an Excite@Home group inside AT&T Broadband, and not merge the services at all, instead spending effort on negotiations with Comcast. Then, once Comcast and AT&T Broadband merge, it's Comcast's problem.
I think that AT&T will try for about a month to sell Excite, and if they're unsuccessful, they'll just wait until the merger.And Verizon's monopolistic practices reign. (Score:3, Interesting)
But I had been planning to switch to Comcast @Home if/when my office begins paying for my connection because supposedly we'll be getting the 2Mbit business connection. At this rate, Comcast will own everything cable-based with the exception of Time-Warner and Cablevision (and other West-coast based cable companies I may not know about).
Guess I might just ask to have my ADSL kicked up to business SDSL...
Transition experience? Bad QOS? (Score:4, Interesting)
One of the first things to go is the quality of service to the customer. Technical foul-ups as things are transitioned, either technically, or between different groups of people.
I have to say that @Home really didn't add much to my Internet experience that, say, Roadrunner, or Media One would have provided. (The Excite merger really didn't see any major benefits for @Home customers.)
While I'm not worried that I'll be completely shut off, I am worried about the quality of service going forward. It is a legitimate concern. But I don't (yet) have enough motiviation to switch to some other form (DSL, etc) of high speed communications.
Here's hoping that @Home/ATT/Whoever doesn't drop the ball.
Even if AOL does the buying, it may not be awful. (Score:3, Interesting)
All AOL application/users jokes aside (and believe me, I find the current AOL consumer offer loathesome!), it may not be so bad. AOL has some incredibly smart people running a pretty impressive network. A financially stable company running a solid network? Sounds pretty good to me, even if it is Steve Case running the show. As long as I don't have to use that AWFUL AOL client, and change the way I use my Internet connection, I'll probably not mind.
Hey - look at it this way - the tech support personnel can't get any worse! Ever talk to an @home tech that's less than 3rd level? Wouldn't know a subnet mask from ldap server.
Re:I have a feeling that... (Score:1, Interesting)
Perhaps your experiences are isolated but I will continue to explain.
Average Hold Time: 600 to 800 seconds. So you are wrong.
That is a problem w/any network not just AT&T Broadband. Customer Service cannot do anything to stop this problem. It is called NETWORK TRAFFIC. It happens no matter where you are.
You are wrong again. Billing is listed item by item and any explanations are easy to give. If the bill says you owe $180 you probably do. There are very few mistakes made in that area. You probably got an install package, missed a bill, and god knows what else.
You go ahead and switch. You are going to find the exact problems + some. Including: 1. your ISP and Telco do not speak together so you are always only getting half the service. 2. Hold times are longer b/c you have to wait for Telco and ISP. 3. Telco blames ISP, ISP blames Telco (run-around) 4. slow speeds. 768/128 sucks compared to the BW from cable. 5. ping responses are always fucking bad.
That's fine, switch all you like. 50 million homes are connected to AT&T broadband. It is a decent service for the cost. Where the hell else are you going to get the bw that you do from there for that cost?
Re:@Home, AT&T, and Comcast (Score:2, Interesting)
In fact, the one time I had to have a technician to the house to fix a hardware problem (the equipment on the pole was *ancient*) he took one look at my machine and asked "Which distro?"
I'd say that they're pretty friendly to Linux.
No good broadband in my neck of the woods... (Score:2, Interesting)
1.) Verizon is my ILEC out here. Verizon gave me only 384/128 dialup over a 768/128 "Bronze" ADSL connection when I had Flashcom service. Flashcom would point fingers at Verizon, Verizon would point fingers at Flashcom. Nothing got resolved. Eventually I quit in disgust.
2.) Adelphia@Home is the cable modem option out here. They actually had a hella deal for a while...free for 3 months, 1/2 price for 6 months, then 25% off for the next 3 months. However, I never got a straight answer about the infrastructure they are using in my neighborhood. Is it DOCSIS or is it old-school cable modem? What's the policy on adding nodes? The sales droids lied to me all the way down the line as far as what they were giving me. "DOCSIS? Sure! It's top-of-the-line infrastructure out your way!" Then when the cable guy came over to install it, I asked him what was going on. "Oh, this isn't DOCSIS. You're getting the old style setup...we won't be using DOCSIS in this neighborhood for at least six months." I told him thank you, no, and that's where that stands.
And what about other options? Satellite? Too expensive, Windows 95/98 only, latency is sucky. Ad-hoc 802.11b networks? Not enough geeks live here, security stinks on ice, Internet access questionable.
So here I sit with v90 dialup for the forseeable future. I don't live in some podunk town where you can throw a rock from end to end. I live in the Greater Los Angeles area. Thanks, ILECs, for killing all the DSL CLECs. Thank you, Los Angeles City Council, for not allowing competition for cable access. Thank you, assholes...I have to suck the Internet through a straw while other friends of mine have a big pipe. Fsck y'all.